Love, Laughter and Tenderness
by Alinyaalethia
Summary: The war is over, weddings are in the air and Ingleside and its inhabitants can't run quickly enough to greet the new world. There are degrees to finish, adventures to be had and lives to start together. Picking up where Rilla of Ingleside leaves off, and a sequel to Pieces of Lives, here is the story of what happened after the war ended.
1. A Marriage is Announced

_Special thanks to Formerly Known as J for reminding me that there was much more scope-to-the-imagination left untapped among the girls of Swallowgate and Pieces of Lives than I had explored, and encouraging me to pick up the thread of their story again. I've missed these girls and it's good to be back. With any luck, you'll feel the same. _

_Love and gratitude as ever to L.M. Montgomery, whose characters and world I have generally run riot with. Any characters not hers are inspired by her, and I can lay claim only to the ideas._

* * *

 _MARRIED ON SATURDAY STOP WANTED YOU TO KNOW STOP_. So said the telegram hand-delivered by the station master's boy to Ingleside as the last of the sun was sinking into the sea. Nan and Di missed its arrival; at the time, they were to be found walking barefoot along the bones of the rocks the ebbed tide uncovered, their marbled bellies glittering with the setting sun. They had called them the deadlands in girlhood, for their strange, liminal existence, Nan supposed, ever poised between two worlds.

She never expected to catch Ingleside like that, least of all on an evening so heavy with the autumnal spice of the season as this one was. Leaves circled in frenetic eddies along the red-paved roads and through the air, acorns, chestnuts and crab-apples crunched to their ruin underfoot and squirrels as red as the roads spooked and stood to attention at the least provocation. It was the ideal evening for one of Mother's poetry readings, the air crisp, and smoke curling from Ingleside's chimney, the smell of cedarwood and fire drifting like a lullaby down from the house and across the dell to the approaching twins. In spite of all these things, there the family sat in tableau as if changed to statues as she and Di came up the walk, shoes chaffing gently against their sea-salted feet; Mother staring fixedly at a slip of a thing held between thumb and middle finger, Dad leaning against the back of her chair, neck craned in unbelief, and Rilla, the lace she was meant to be working for her wedding dress lying forgotten in her lap, and not a word uttered between them. Only Susan went on placidly knitting, exempt from the spell of the moment; so there were three people sat staring like lemmings on her veranda. So nothing. Gertrude Grant's baby wasn't going to be short a christening shawl on _that_ account.

Then Rilla blinked the sun out of her eyes, spotted them on the walkway and came flying down the lane to meet them as if Ate herself were at her heels.

'Have you heard?' she cried as she ran, 'have you heard?' forgetting that of course they couldn't have heard, traipsing along the shore like a pair of naiads. 'Have you _heard_ ' as she collided hard with Nan's chest. Nan put out a hand to brace them both and balance proving elusive, ended by pulling her sister into an impromptu reel. They fell among the mint, leaves, and the calceolarias, crushing them and filling the air with their rich, green perfume. Somehow Nan disentangled their limbs from the botany and installed Rilla and herself on the steps to the veranda. That done she turned to Rilla with expectation, 'Have we heard what, Spider?'

'I am not –'

'Only that Jem has gone and married Faith Meredith,' said Dad, cutting off his youngest daughter mid-protest and sounding much as if Nan had asked the weather forecast for the evening. He was grinning a grin worthy of a Cheshire Cat though, and Mother, now Nan could see her close up, was positively bristling with happiness. Nan couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her like that, and it would have hurt if she had stopped to think about it. As it was, she was too busy joining Di in clamouring for further details.

'Oh but there aren't any,' said Dad, utterly unfazed. Two pairs of eyebrows, one autumnal, the other chestnut, shot up in incredulity.

'What do you mean, you don't know any more than that?' This from Di. From the shadows of the Ingleside veranda Susan Baker sniffed her endorsement of this opinion.

'Anne darling, may I just…'deftly Dad extracted the telegram from between mother's fingers and handed it to Nan, whose dainty fingers closed upon it greedily.

 _MARRIED ON SATURDAY STOP WANTED YOU TO KNOW STOP._ As the crickets hummed an evensong, Nan and Di squinted at the typeface of the letter as if further study would elicit more details.

'It's no good,' said Mother dreamily, 'I've made such a study of it as to have the words stamped on my brain, but I still can't take it in. Little Jem –my baby of the house of dreams –married. Can you believe it? Nanlet,' with sudden inspiration, 'did he say to _you_?'

'No,' said Nan, now turning the letter sideways for good measure, though without expectation of discovering anything. Nothing being forthcoming beyond the lingering smell of fresh ink, she restored it to the neat square of its origin and handed it over her shoulder to Dad.

'Saturday was…'began Rilla, then hesitated. Mother took up the thread, ticking events off on her fingers as she kept track. 'Ladies Aid was yesterday, and prayer meeting was on –no that's tonight, so it must be –'

'Thursday,' said Dad for all of them. 'I give the postal service a day to catch us up, so Jem must have sent it on Wednesday.'

Another Baker sniff from the depths of the veranda. 'You do not mean to tell me, doctor dear,' in tones of indignation, 'that that dear boy waited a whole _three days_ before telling us of this good news? Because that I will not believe.'

'Oh I don't know. If we'd had our way, Anne-girl, how many days would we have holed up in our house o'dreams?'

' _Dad!_ ' said all three girls at once. Behind them Susan's needles clicked agreement.

'Susan,' said Dad unperturbed, 'thinks I'm being most improper. And our children are horrified. Though why they should be by wedding talk when we're planning for so many at once I don't know.'

'Less one now,' said Di laughingly. 'And it isn't your wedding we mind hearing about –it's the afterward that doesn't feature Captain Jim, Miss Cornelia and the fireside we take exception to.'

'Quite right too,' said Susan. 'And there's Rosemary Meredith coming up the way as we speak. Perhaps Faith will have had the sense to write a decent letter if little Jem has not. We can but hope.' Reaching the end of a row, Susan carefully capped her needles, set her project down and went to ready a tea tray, and Nan hid a smile as effectually as was possible in the daisy chain she had been weaving. Whatever gossip came and went from Ingleside, no one was ever going to accuse it of incivility to its guests on Susan's watch.

'Have you heard?' called Rosemary Meredith, this apparently being the question of the hour. She was beaming to match Mother, and Nan couldn't remember having ever seen her so excited about anything. In her memory Mrs Meredith was a golden cloud of a woman, serenely floating from crisis to fete without missing a beat. This time everyone had heard, and shouts and exultations came off the veranda like sunbursts. The girls of Ingleside rose up as a unit the better to accommodate their guest, and betook themselves to the porch swing under the kitchen window, from whence drifted competing scents of cinnamon, cardamom and clove. Whatever Susan had in the oven was shaping up to be a confectionary masterpiece.

'Of course you have,' said Rosemary, more to herself than to them. Ignoring a re-emerging Susan's protestations of horror, she took up the place on the steps Nan had so lately vacated and clasped her arms around her ankles, and drank deeply the mingled smell of the crushed mint and calceolarias.

'Isn't it wonderful?'

'Marvellous,' said mother, joining her friend on the steps.

'I don't suppose,' said Dad, with the return of the Cheshire Cat grin, 'That you got, oh I don't know, anything like a more detailed account of the occasion than we did?'

'Where it happened, who took the service, guests, all that sort of thing?' said Rosemary, proffering a telegram from the sleeve of her blouse.

'Yes, something like that,' said Nan, exchanging the Ingleside telegram for the Manse's. This one ran: _MARRIED SATURDAY STOP WANTED YOU FIRST TO KNOW STOP WILL VISIT AT WEEKEND STOP CAN TELL YOU MORE THEN STOP_.

'Might have guessed,' said Di, the laughter inherent in her voice ticklishly warm against Nan's ear. 'Faith's letters were always short things. She never did quite grasp they were supposed to be full of news –except when writing to Mouse, of course.'

'Yes but that was because she knew Poppy would read them out,' Nan said, and laughed herself. 'I don't think she saw the point in writing four longish letters when they would only get passed around anyway.'

'Well she never thought _Jem_ would fill in the gaps,' said Rilla, who had resumed her lace-making by the last of the light. Around them Susan's tea-tray clattered and chattered as she tried to cram a spread worthy of royalty onto the veranda's wicker table.

'Will you pour, or shall I, Mrs. Doctor dear?'

'Too late to be asking,' said Rosemary with a laugh as Di wove under Susan's elbow and took over the service.

'You know,' this as Mother accepted a rosebud teacup from Di, 'I can understand not wanting an occasion. But we wouldn't have made an occasion of it if we'd been there, would we Gilbert?'

There followed a profound coughing fit on their father's part, for which Di thumped him heartily on the back. This over and without looking at their mother, a red-faced, still breathless Dad said, 'Anne-girl, you wouldn't have had it anything _less_ than an occasion. Both of you,' with a courteous nod at Mrs. Meredith.

'We-ell, only because we'd be glad for them.'

'Quite,' said Dad, before succumbing to another, strikingly deliberate coughing fit.

'Well _I_ don't see,' said Susan, reclaiming her teapot, 'what the rush was about. Plans were coming very nicely together, I must say.'

'I don't suppose they wanted to wait,' said Rosemary indulgently. 'I can't say I blame them. Everyone had so _much_ of waiting when the war was on.'

'That,' said Di, 'may be the understatement of the year.'

'I'll tell you who will blame them,' said Rilla, ' _The Glen Notes_. Ken says it's terribly important to get a story before it breaks, and of course they'll have to break this one after the fact.'

They all laughed undisguisedly at that, even Di, who had spent much of their earlier walk recounting the trials of convincing the paper to accept her picture submissions. Finally, the light grew too dim for Rilla's lace and she bundled her work under her arm to take indoors. Then, with a kiss for mother and an assurance to Susan that she wouldn't ruin her eyes working Venetian lace by candlelight, she had slipped through the screen door on fairy feet.

They drifted away by degrees after that, Nan to write a letter, Di to answer one, Gilbert to minister to the Drew twins' measles, Susan to wash up the tea things. Anne and Rosemary lingered until the first star sparkled into being, a winking piece of celestial lace against the blue of the sky. The midges were out by then, droning gentle counterpoint to the crickets and dancing along bare arms and exposed necks. There were promises on both sides to meet soon and take the whole episode to pieces again, and take a mutual brace against the tide of Glen gossip, and then one by one the lights of Ingleside went out for the night.

* * *

The weekend found the Glen St. Mary station's arrivals platform packed with people as it had not been since the war ended. Everyone had turned out in expectation of welcoming the newlyweds home; they wanted only Shirley, who was still fighting a battle in red tape to come home. Nan and Di stood craning their necks for sight of the train while little Bruce ran from one end of the platform to the other keeping a lookout and reporting back to the massed Merediths and Blythes at intervals. 'The 14:02 from Kincardine is due in six minutes. Will they be on that one?' Meeting with a negative he was off again, bobbing up seconds later to announce 'The 14:06 from Plymouth is running late –they aren't on _that_ one, are they?'

'No darling,' said Rosemary, and reassured he was off again towards the far end of the platform.

'They won't be on the incoming Bright River train either' Gilbert called after him through cupped hands. On his arm, Anne, verily bouncing on the balls of her feet, such was her excitement, gave his elbow a reproving tug.

'You'll spoil his fun, dearest.'

'An upcoming conductor like that? Not a chance,' said Gilbert, leaving Bruce to wonder why everyone was laughing when he came back to tell them that the 14:10 was expected early and was therefore being held outside the station and how did _that_ make sense? There was more laughter from the adults, to Bruce's further bemusement. It was left to the Rev. Meredith, recovering first, to confirm that Jem and Faith _would_ be on that train, all going well.

All did go well, and as Anne afterwards remembered it, time seemed to stretch taut as Jem helped Faith from the train and she ran towards them. Rosemary was running to, everyone was, and all around family jostled and tugged and pulled, determined to bestow hugs and handshakes on the happy travellers.

'Do let them breathe,' said Gilbert very dry, from somewhere behind Anne's shoulder. 'Much easier to answer questions that way.'

Anne, looking up at little Jem –when _had_ he got so big –just caught the grin he gave his father over Nan's glossy head. But hadn't they questions to ask!

'We thought,' someone –Di perhaps? –was saying, 'you'd arranged for a summer wedding.'

'What and detract from Spider's ceremony?' this as Jem leaned across Di to pull on a stray curl nesting on Rilla's forehead.

'I am not –' began poor Rilla, and Jem seemingly took pity on her.

' 'Course you're not a spider, much too grown now, what shall I call you instead? Cricket? Ladybird? One of those –Faith what are those long-legged water thingummies Carl hunts along the river for?'

Rilla meanwhile had done a credible reproduction of the Baker sniff and stalked keep Bruce company by the framed train timetable.

'Are Carl and Una with you?' this from Rosemary.

'No, Carl's wrangling a paper on the life cycle of something unpronounceable and Una stayed on to help him.'

'I don't recall Una much caring for unpronounceable insects,' said Gilbert for everyone.

'She doesn't,' said Faith. 'She doesn't trust Carl to remember to eat though, left to his own devices, and she does care about Carl. And no, mother Anne, I can see you thinking it, no sweethearting on anyone's part. They're both entirely to taken up with studying.'

'I never said a word!' said Anne in vain.

'You were about to,' said Gilbert and kissed her ear. This occasioned squeals from the children, even the ones now married as they made shows of covering their eyes.

'Where did it happen? – Was anyone there to see it? – Did you have good music? –What about afterwards –was there much of a celebration?' all flew in rapid succession from the amassed Blythes and Merediths. Seeing the couple unsure which part of this flurry to start on, Rev. Meredith began shepherding his family towards the car.

'I'm afraid we rather promised Susan we wouldn't be long collecting you,' he said over his shoulder as he made a concerted effort to prise Bruce away from the train timetable.

'She's laying a luncheon on purpose for you. I do hope you weren't swayed by the dining car. I know I always used to find it rather fascinating myself –Bruce, love that really isn't going anywhere.'

Faith and Jem were quick to reassure the minister that in fact the train in question had been without a dining-car due to insufficient staff, which detracted nicely from the amusement provoked by Bruce's reluctance to depart the station.

Outside the station was a sea of carriages and automobiles all pressed up one against another. This was further exacerbated by the Manse people having travelled one way and the Inglesidians another. It being clear they would never all fit into the Ingleside automobile for the return journey, Gilbert slipped Faith's arm through his vacant one and said turning to her, 'I think you'd much better come with us. I ought to warn you…'

Whatever he said was lost to the carriage party, though it must have been about Jem because Faith's silvery laughter drifted back over her shoulder, gossamer-light.

'Much too late for that,' she said when she had caught her breath, 'that horse has well and truly bolted.'

* * *

Susan had promised a roast chicken for the occasion, and a roast chicken there was laid out on the sideboard when the party filed into Ingleside. It was a beautiful white and gold marble, smartly trussed in twine and crammed with more onion, sage and thyme than any chicken had a right to reasonably expect. It was further augmented by tender and buttery spears of asparagus, glazed carrots, and the remnants of yesterday's ham. As for the table, it was decked out in its best Sunday linen, what the children had called 'wedding linen' in the old days, and groaning under the weight of dishes of roasted potatoes, nutmeg-infused swedes, cabbage shavings laced with bacon, pigs in blankets a thumblegnth long, and born triumphally to the head of the table as people filed into the dining room, a cheese soufflé worthy of any cookery book.

'Susan,' said Jem with affection as he snared her into a reluctant hug, 'did you set out to feed the five thousand or what?'

' _Don't_ tease,' said Nan, 'give her this one chance to make up for that pick-up supper we were in the middle of the evening you arrived home, won't you?'

'Well I don't know about that, Nan dear,' said Susan with as much austerity as she could muster under the circumstances, 'but that cheese soufflé won't last forever, and that you may tie to.'

It was of no consequence; though portioned out with due diligence no one gave the cheese soufflé much mind. Everyone was too taken up with quizzing the happy couple on wedding details to think of eating. Asparagus stalks grew cool and potatoes softened as people talked over, round and in places –or so it seemed –on top of one another.

'It wasn't that we didn't want to wait, exactly,' said Faith when finally she managed to get a word in edgewise, 'more that we couldn't. Life seemed to stall for so long –and then suddenly it was moving again and we wanted to catch those years up and…'here she shrugged, adequate words eluding her.

'This seemed the best way to do it,' said Jem. 'You don't mind?'

'Mind?' said Anne. 'Of course not darling, if you felt like that about it of course that was the only way it could happen. We quite see that.'

'The only thing I'm sorry about,' said Gilbert, 'is that the Glen has lost a fine surgeon in the process.' He sounded only half serious. Even so, Jem tilted his head in inquiry and said, 'I expect I can still do both, if it comes to that.'

'I didn't mean you,' said Gilbert, and in the pantry connecting kitchen to dining room Susan stood, poised with an apple pie, ready to avert a crisis with lattice pastry should it be required of her. None came. Faith laughed that warm, silvery laugh again and said, 'Jem can have the position if it's going begging and welcome. I did more than my share of cutting people open over in Europe, thanks all the same.'

And somehow, Anne thought, watching Faith thread her fingers through Jem's, there was no arguing with that. Susan brought out the pie, and the gingerbread with whipped cream, and a generous dish of rhubarb crumble, and the current of conversation ran swiftly on to such mundane details as houses (a long, squat affair called Larkrise with a proliferation of William Morris wallpapers –too much for Faith's taste but with reasonable rent), who else had been in on the secret (no one, though they did startle Mara by turning up on her doorstep afterwards and begging a floor to sleep on while they sorted out a house), and the how and where (a special license and the Presbyterian church on New Water Street in Halifax) it had happened.

Anne watched them in the retelling, the shared glances and entwined fingers, and felt gladness for her children flare up in her like a candle flame. This was, after all, what she had dreamed for them for years, love in all its changeable moods. That she hadn't born witness to its official sanction hardly seemed to matter. She had known the truth of this particular love-story in her heart for years as it was. She drank in details greedily as they were outpoured and thought how odd it was that this, of all the things in the world, should make her feel old.

What was it Faith had said minutes ago about wanting to catch the years of the war up? They had done that and more –that was obvious. All the children were, really, reaching for life with both hands and clutching their burdens close. And they did it with such dizzying speed that it left her breathless. Was this, perhaps, how Marilla had felt when Avonlea was rocked by the introduction of a telephone line? It seemed absurd to wonder, because the war felt a much bigger cosmic shift than the telephone line ever had. Or did she only feel that way because then, as the telephone marched its way into the haven of Avonlea she had stood poised on the brink of her own new adventures, her life held tight in her hands? Then Gilbert threaded an arm around her and was raising a glass with the other to toast the bridal pair, and the earth seemed to steady itself. This was a brave new world that changed by the heartbeat, but they would be going into it faces to the sun and so many united fronts – Jem and Faith were only the beginning. She could wish nothing more for her children than that.


	2. Call for the Living

_Thank you, as ever for reading and reviewing. And thank you most especially for the lovely welcome back -it's good to be here again and writing._

* * *

'It's like an especially civilized jungle, isn't it?' said Jem, contemplating the sitting room at Larkrise, a case still in each hand. He set them down now, the better to pace the room and study the plethora of strawberry thieves that papered its walls, all of them poised to pluck the first bite of so many giddy strawberries.

'You can see how the house gets its name.'

'Can you? And here I thought they were thrushes,' said Faith, joining him in his circuit of the room. At this, Jem stopped short, so that Faith all but tripped over him.

'Well _I_ don't know,' he said, eyes creasing with laughter.

'Catkin will, I expect,' said Faith, and getting a raised eyebrow from Jem, 'really, you must have heard me call her that before now. No? Well _Nan_ to you then, when she comes up to visit.' She collapsed onto the sofa, a safe distance from the multiplicity of strawberry-crazed thrushes, and Jem followed suit.

'Is she threatening to, then?' he asked, stretching out so that his feet invaded the territory of Faith's lap.

'Mm,' said Faith.

It had been back at Ingleside, as the weekend drew traitorously to a close. Everyone, it seemed had wanted to whisk herself and Jem away for a word. Miss Cornelia had come up the walk, arms brim-full of quilts, reportedly from the women of the Presbyterian Church, but even Faith knew enough of quilting to see at a glance they were all of the Bryant stamp. Norman Douglas had wanted to thump Jem on the back in congratulatory fashion, while Ellen talked at Faith about the best way of _managing_ (emphasis Ellen's) men, Susan had been full of cookery advice though with the grim air of one who feels it a lost cause, and Rilla had wanted all the details of impending honeymoon and Faith couldn't recall what else. Which was why it was late Sunday afternoon before Faith managed a quiet three-quarter hour with Nan, then deep in the throes of packing to resume the school term in Avonlea.

'It has to get worse before it gets better,' she had called through the door before Faith had even entered, obviously anticipating Susan or her mother.

'You have no idea,' Faith had said, springing catlike onto Di's bed –Nan's was taken up with dresses, skirts, and blouses awaiting packing – 'how heartened I am to hear someone else say that. No one ever seems to believe me.'

All told, the room wasn't nearly the shambles the salutation had suggested, at least not in Faith's book. The floor was awash in exercise books, ink bottles, and shoes, but the shoes were all in pairs, and the books stacked in orderly fashion, Nan having ever had, in Faith's memory, an almost religious fervour about the preservation of her books' spines, even the notebooks. Perhaps the most disorder was occasioned by a vast quantity of tissue paper, no doubt intended to preserve clothes, but which true to form, had contrived to populate every corner of the room.

'I'd offer to help,' Faith had said, 'but you've probably got a system going, have you?'

'A very complicated one,' said Nan, turning on her heels so that she faced Faith, and nodding with studied solemnity. There were any number of ribbing replies to this, but Faith let them go, revelling instead in the time alone, in the feeling that the years had fallen away, and but for the clutch of apple-scented sweetbriar on Nan's desk, they were at Swallowgate again, unpacking for a fresh term. Now Faith thought of it, they hadn't had _nearly_ long enough, the girls who pinned hopes.

'I wish you were coming back,' Faith said, impulsively stalking across the room and picking up a strand of the sweetbriar. She rubbed it under her nose, savouring the sweet spice of it, the woodsy green smell of the stalk, and the soft silkiness of the petals.

'What and get underfoot at every turn?' Nan was laughing, arms full of half-folded organdie.

'We'd love it,' said Faith. 'You know we would. And you'd be in your element. You always could argue down a hall better than the rest of us.'

Nan had abandoned her efforts with her trunk, folded her arms and turned the brunt of her facility with debate on Faith.

'You know it would only have been an extra year,' she said then. 'Twelve months to take that MLitt and how I would ever have wrangled the time away for Rilla's wedding in the summer is anyone's guess. Of course, you've rather saved me the conundrum of getting to _yours_ , but I wasn't to know that then.'

'Do you mind so much?'

'Not at all,' said Nan, with a toss of her glossy head. 'On the contrary, I understand it in spades. In my highest flights of fancy Jerry and I somehow dodge all of the Glen fuss that is sure to result from yet another Blythe and Meredith wedding, and there's only us, and the family, Mouse and Mara attending. It's held in Rainbow Valley some springtime afternoon, and the swallows are out in chorus…you don't have to persuade me the virtues of your approach. It did surprise me though. I always thought you'd want to finish with your studies first.'

'I'll still take them, if that's what's worrying you, Catkin. I'll just have to jump through double the hoops for my trouble –and sign more paperwork, probably rope Jem into signing it to. I don't think I could give up doctoring if I tried though –and I _have_ thought about it. The bliss of just not _doing_ now it's all over. Of long, languorous days worthy of one of your Victorian heroines, spent reclining on the sofa… I can't make it work though. It's an instinct, or an itch, or something. Like…' Faith reached for and had failed to come up with a plausible comparison. It was Nan that supplied it, in the end.

'My economies. I know. Mara said we had them bone deep, you and I. This was back when we thought Di and Poppy were probably dying and couldn't for the life of us think how you could _want_ to do it all the time. And Mara thought it wasn't the sort of thing you got a choice about –more like Highland Sandy when he talks about having something laid on him to do.'

'Mm' said Faith, humming agreement. 'Ariel _would_ see it, I think. People tend to when they're the same, even if it's about something else. Forgive me forgetting your economies, darling, I used to wish for them with a vengeance the nights I couldn't sleep after I left. I'd lie awake thinking _if I could have anything most in the world, it would be one of Nan's economies_ …that was before they had evolved outright into stories. Nothing I conjured on my own seemed half as good.'

That made Nan laugh, a bright bird-song of a sound. She reached for a selection of clothes topmost off her bed and began to fold them into the trunk, snaring tissue paper as she went. 'That's really why you want me at close quarters then,' she said, a smile warm in her voice. 'My value as a storyteller. Can't you make do with our Ariel?'

'Of course,' said Faith. She restored the sweetbriar to its vase and flopped backward on Di's bed, basking in an incoming shaft of light. It washed the room in warm creamy light, even the handful of dust moats that drifted lazily over the gentle chaos of Nan's packing. 'I don't think she'd do all that much for Jerry though.'

Faith watched Nan stop her efforts with the clothes as abruptly as she had resumed them, gauzy organdies and vivid muslins lying forgotten across her lap. They would crease, but the thought didn't seem to strike Nan. With the sun still streaming on her and her arms cast out from her sides, she looked for all the world like one of the myriad china shepherdesses that had populated Swallowgate. Only Faith couldn't seem to find it in her to laugh.

'You think something's wrong,' said Nan.

'So do you,' Faith said. Nan made no answer and Faith didn't press. She'd had years to learn there was no point in pushing at Nan Blythe's limits, first through Jerry's ralings against her stubbornness and after that from years of sharing a house. It was a quiet sort of steel, Nan's, but no less there for that. So they sat in Nan's room, bathed in sunlight and air thick with the crisp apple smell of the sweetbriar, and kept each to their own council for a moment. Then Nan began with the clothes again, the rustle of the tissue paper effortlessly dissipating the weight of the atmosphere, and Faith said, 'I don't think any of us are finding it particularly easy going. We all thought it would be, of course, that somehow we could turn some magical key and get back to how we were before the war, but it hasn't worked out like that at all.'

'Hence your wedding,' said Nan, nodding. 'And my taking the Avonlea school over that MLitt in English, if you want to know. Academia was what I did when the war was on. I couldn't go back to it now. I think…I think the spectre of it would haunt me. Does that sound absurd?'

'Not at all.'

'I will visit though,' said Nan, 'if only to see that wallpaper you described to us the other evening. You have got a knack, Parrot, for landing houses with curiosities.'

'It could be pastel shepherdesses,' said Faith, laughter bubbling up in her throat at last. It dappled the walls of the twins little sloped room like yet more sunlight –of course Nan caught it off her and joined in. 'At least,' said Faith as she nursed a stitch in her side, her breath coming back to her in grateful gasps, 'at least the Morris paper isn't breakable!'

Now Faith considered it, vast civilized jungle –Jem wasn't wrong –of sprawling birds and fruits, and wondered in the first instance about the sanity of the decorator, and then, more prosaically, how best to survive its company for the foreseeable future. The shepherdesses, she recalled had provided moments of catharsis by occasionally breaking, usually the fault of an over-zealous duster, a satchel, or more often than not, the cat of Swallowgate. Apparently Jem had been mulling it over too, because now he squinted at the yards of strawberry thieves and said 'Could we tack sheets up, do you think?'

'So they could gather dust, you mean?' said Faith, giving Jem her most seraphic look –which wasn't much, her eyes were too prone to sparks of impending mischief. 'Would _you_ care to beat the dust out of them?' For good measure, she pushed a protesting Jem's feet off her lap and resumed her navigation of the room. 'No…I rather think this one is Abelard, don't you?'

'Faith, you're never naming them!'

'Bernard is opposite him, of course, and that would be –'

'You've missed out Heloise.'

'I have _not,_ ' indignantly, 'they're all named for _monks_ , you goose. Anyway, I don't expect it to stick. There's far too many of them. But if I'm going to stare at them while wrestling with a degree, I have to call them something.'

'Whatever you like,' said Jem, catching her up and wrapping his arms around her waist. 'So long as it doesn't interfere with this,' said Jem kissing her.

'Let's not go mad here,' murmured Faith, before threading her arms around Jem's neck and returning the kiss in kind.

* * *

Nan came home to the telephone ringing, and at first almost missed it for the shouting of the Pye boys as they raced past the house, sending stones skimming off of the oak tree in the garden. They were trying for the nuts, Nan supposed, but succeeded only in scattering a fistful of leaves and a pair of disconcerted squirrels. For a minute Nan stood poised in the doorway, that day's marking balanced precariously on her arm and counted the rings. It had been a long first day back, with any amount of housekeeping to take care of and quite as many children reluctant to have it taken care of. At least ten paper aeroplanes had zinged across the classroom in the first half of the morning alone. That had been the Blewett and Sloane contingent mostly. Then she had sent them out for their elven o'clock break and one of them –Nan was inclined to blame the Pye boys of the stone throwing – had gummed the girls' desks closed, or as many as could be managed in fifteen minutes, which improbably, had been most of them. _Un_ gumming them had taken another half hour, and that was after sending little Sarah Keith to fetch the assistance of Mr. Craig, principal. There was an invitation from Aunt Diana extending an offer of tea for later this afternoon, could Nan but summon the energy to venture out again, and another from Poppy that she hadn't so much as had time to glance at postmarked to the previous week.

 _Forgive me, Mouse, it's been one of those weeks with no end_ , thought Nan, mentally composing her answer as she wended her way to the telephone nook. _Jem came home –married no less –and then there was the endless packing and unpacking…_ By the time she had reached the telephone nook Nan had decided it was definitely the schoolhouse ring; shrill, persistent, and two short rings to two long. And she had to answer, because it might be important. Why, Nan wondered, easing the books onto the kitchen table, loose leaf papers slipping from between them in genteel disarray, had she not heeded the lesson of her father's career and taken a job with an end-time? One where people couldn't call late in the afternoon with schoolboard advisories, warnings of measles, or insist that the exercises set for so-and-so were far too difficult –or in the memorable case of the house of Sloane, not taxing _enough_? _You know why_ , came the answer at once, ready-made; _You can think of no greater gift than imparting your love of learning to them, even if it's only Sally Andrews in year two._

It was Susan on the phone, talking faster than Nan could ever remember her to have talked. Vaguely she made out 'Shirley' and then 'October,' but the rest of it was a jumble, and Nan was disinclined to blame the line. She had _practice_ , goodness knew, deciphering the outpourings of overwrought parents from this telephone.

'Susan,' said Nan, striving not to laugh, but wanting to very much, ' _what_ has happened?'

There was an explosive noise down the line that might have been anything from Susan dropping a plate to banging pans together in exultation. With mental apology to Poppy, Nan delayed the letter she owed her still further until she had written to her mother demanding a detailed account of whatever-it-was that was happening at Ingleside.

'…Home,' Susan was saying when Nan became aware of the conversation again. 'That blessed boy is coming home at the end of October –only 4 weeks, would you believe? After all this time…' In fact, Nan couldn't believe it, but was hardly being given time to say so. Sending an unexpected prayer the direction of excitable parents everywhere, she half-hummed consolatory noises of agreement, even as she rocked easily from balls to heels of feet in an impromptu slip-change step that threatened to dislodge the phone. Shirley –Nutkin –the boy-brother of her childhood would be home! In a handful of weeks they would all be back together again. Susan was still blethering away, what to cook –there would be fudge of course, there would, the 'Susan Baker brand,' not storebought, and monkeyfaces –and who to send for –'You'll come back, of course, Nan dear,' as if Nan's time were her own and not the property of the Avonlea school. But 'Yes, of course,' said Nan, meaning it, and impressed she had managed even this much conversation. Even if it wasn't a weekend, even if it meant imposing on Nancy Keith in the process. No matter, the children loved Miss Keith, however the schoolboard felt about her more unorthodox –there was no better word –teaching methods. Ingleside had been in too many divers strands and places of late to turn down the chance of a reunion.

'You'll send for Mara too? Only I think…'

'Of course,' said Nan again, refraining from mentioning it seemed unlikely that Mara would want persuading, whoever was asking.

'Good,' this from Susan with decision. She had snapped back into her Baker self sometime while Nan had been plotting travel plans apparently, and now was laying out a menu with militaristic strategy the soldiers as had been might have done well to observe. 'Now,' she was saying, 'I am off to polish the silver, for I do not know that it has been done since Faith and Jem were here last and I won't have…'

'Susan,' said Nan, helplessly and thinking of the phone bill they must be incurring between them, 'I hardly think Shirley will notice whether…'

It was no good. Susan would brook no interruption. In the end Nan escaped by pleading a need to telephone Kingsport and Mara while the calling rates were still reasonable, and then, having cradled the phone, decided the marking had better keep if her conscience wasn't going to prick her. Always supposing it could needle her about two things at once. She was beginning to feel a twinge for Aunt Diana and tea, there having never been time to confirm her attendance one way or another. That at least was solved by what was intended to be a brief telephone call to Willow Farm. The trouble was that Aunt Diana was almost as excised about the impending homecoming as Susan.

'Anne will be so _glad!_ ' was the first thing she said, and then proceeded to rhapsodize the wonderfulness of this until Anne Cordelia could be heard to summon her away.

'It's so _wonderful_ ,' was Aunt Diana's parting, and though Nan couldn't help agreeing, she pressed her fingers to her eyes once she had bedded the phone down again. Ariel next –always supposing she had the energy to talk with one more person. It really had ben that kind of day.

She needn't have worried; from the moment the telephone began to ring it came back to Nan how little effort Mara had demanded. They had existed together, as she had told Faith, at their most mutually exhausted back when the influenza was going the rounds at Swallowgate, and whatever else Nan remembered about that time, sheremembered the harbour that had been the intervals with Mara, when they ministered to each other and not their patients. Then she was on the phone, crisp and practical as ever, 'Evensong, Kingsport –'

'It's only me,' said Nan, and in a heartbeat the crisp, starched theatre-grade speech was gone and it was her friend on the line, old-world teuchter -an unlikely inheritance from ancestors Nan had never parsed - and all.

'You've heard then? I suppose Shirley will have written you too?'

'You knew?' said Nan, because she could think of nothing else to say. But of course Mara would know –there was no earthly way her brother had written only to Susan and Ingleside generally.

'Susan's been telling me all about it,' said Nan. 'The fatted calf will likely be slaughtered, there's certainly going to be fudge and monkeyfaces and I don't know what else –oh, polished silver, the likes of which was probably never seen before. And what I actually meant to do was call up and relay a summons. Can the Kingsport dramatics make do with someone else as Portia for a day or two?'

'They'll have to, won't they?' said Mara, voice warm. 'Even supposing Susan would forgive my not being there, I'd not miss it.'

'Good,' said Nan. 'I owe Shirley a debt if only because it means you and I can catch up again properly. It was Mouse's wedding, last time, wasn't it, we were in the same place?'

'That's never right,' said Mara, but then she proceeded to count backwards months and events and found that it _was_. 'No matter, we'll be all in one place again soon enough –less Mouse of course. We'll have to find a way to wrest her from Ontario for a spell –but that's another occasion. Four weeks, isn't it?'

'Yes. I expect Susan's charting them on the calendar.'

'You're not, then?'

'No,' said Nan and laughed, 'I thought I'd leave that part of it to you, Ariel.'

Somehow they ran on talking long after they'd exhausted their notes on the best trains to catch and boat crossings to aim for travelling Kingsport to P. E. Island. Poppy's wedding felt an age ago and there were any number of pieces of life to catch each other up on since its happening. Only a hasty remembrance for the statutory three minutes recalled them, with promises on both sides to write often, and to see each other soon.

The marking, Nan thought as she came away from the phone, would keep. The sunset was a rose gold poem of a thing, dyeing the world a luscious amber colour. Through the window the resinous smell of the pines beckoned, rich, tart and smoky. The marking would keep. She was in no frame of mind to do it now in any event. If need be she could always catch up today's spelling tests at tomorrow's eleven o'clock break. She might even prevent another desk gumming instalment in the process. Now the leaves where singing, the winds sighing and the flowers beckoned; smiling Michaelmas daisies, starry coneflowers, and of course Walter's beloved farewell summers –asters really. Much better, Nan thought, a walk out to Hester Grey's garden to pass company with them and spin a dream of what the future would send.


	3. And Then They Were Home

_I meant to write you a homecoming, and I suppose this is, but not the one I'd expected -and definitely longer than anticipated! Never mind, we can say it makes up for the long pause between chapters. Thank you to all of you reading and/or reviewing. Between work, and podcasting and somewhere in there writing, it's good to know this story is finding people._

* * *

It was the perfect day to be travelling, Faith thought, grey, but dry, a hint iron in the air, and the heavy grey underbellies of the clouds pregnant with rain. Blustery, but not enough so to prolong the journey, with a chill deep enough to justify snuggling against Jem's side in some secluded corner seat of a carriage but not enough to cut to the bone.

Faith thought all this vaguely as she tugged a tam-o'shanter over her ears and accepted of the coat Jem helped her into. He lingered to kiss the nape of her neck, arms coiling around her, warm and tight as some well-beloved blanket.

'You'll make us late to the station,' said Faith, half-turning towards him. Already she could feel the watery sensation Jem's kisses evoked rippling through her, and titled her head upward in expectation of a proper kiss. When it came, it had the heat of a sunbeam, the weight of an anchor.

'The station isn't going anywhere,' said Jem, easing Faith's coat back off her shoulders, and really, Faith thought, there was no arguing with that.

* * *

They met Mara on the platform, coat buttoned to her throat and case in hand, looking like a stray ray of golden sunlight against the thin grey afternoon. There was just enough cold to put rose apples into her cheeks and brighten her eyes, and Faith found she couldn't remember whether autumn had always suited Mara so well. Less the weather, she thought, pulling her into a hug, more the occasion of the journey.

'You must be glad,' she said into the blue and green wool of Mara's scarf, 'I know I was, when word finally came.'

She let Mara go and wove her arm back through the crook of Jem's elbow. There was smoke in the air, all but invisible, save for the lingering smell of burning. Somewhere close by an industrious farmer or two must be firing the fields in celebration of having got the harvest in before the season turned in anticipation of winter.

'Isn't it strange,' Faith said now, craning her neck for a sight of their expected train, 'the way one suddenly remembers Kingsport has _countryside_ out here? You can live in the heart of the city and forget it all for the bustle and rush and the way greenery exists in pockets, and then you go to catch the train and it's as if its bridging two worlds, or something.'

'Alastair has a theory about that,' said Mara, her voice sounding warm even as her breath rose like smoke before them.

'Yes well,' said Jem, 'he would. Still means to build things, does he?'

'Rebuild our harbour more nearly,' said Mara. She had by now joined Faith in scanning the horizon for the train. 'Signal failure at North Allerton, do you think?'

'Isn't there always?' said Faith and laughed, her breath misting her nose and cheeks in the process so that they prickled red with cold from the damp. Overhead the rain clouds parted and the first fat raindrops began to fall in slow and somnolent patter.

'Some things never change,' said Jem. 'I wouldn't have _said_ we fought the war for signal failure to continue everlastingly at North Allerton, and I guess neither would Shirley,' with a nod to Mara, 'but I'm glad it _does_ , or rather, that it can. Do you know what I mean?'

The women hummed assent but the sound was lost over the swoosh and rattle of the incoming train as it jostled into place, a vast green and brown spackled snake of a thing, spitting steam and hissing smoke. Even half a foot back from the brink of the platform, Faith could all but taste the coal on her tongue.

'Not a minute too soon either,' said Jem as the rain began to fall in good earnest. Somehow, he took charge of their cases and shepherded Faith and Mara towards the train, corralling them past porters and disembarking passengers until they were securely installed in a closed carriage, the cases stowed and a gleaming table between them. There was a touch of October hail mixed in with the rain now, they could hear it hammering against the windows and roof of the carriage like the bell-hammers on an especially crazed glockenspiel. Faith peeled her gloves off and pressed her hands to the back of her neck for warmth, from which place Jem extracted them as he settled next to her, folding them into his coat pocket. 'Much better,' he said as he did so, then grinned the Blythe grin at them both.

'We'll not be minding the journey today, anyway,' said Mara, with a last glance for the platform as the train hummed to noisy life. 'We always used to in the spring weather, do you remember?'

'Yes,' said Faith. 'Though we minded the leave-taking as much as the weather, the way I remember it. Wasn't that why we all ended up summering at Swallowgate?'

'Tell me about that,' said Jem suddenly, surprising them. They had been settling in for a long remember-when, now they startled out of it.

'You really want Nan for that too,' said Mara. Opposite her, Faith nodded, the crown of her head knocking gently against Jem's shoulder as she resettled herself against him.

'Well, obviously,' said Jem, unfazed. 'Catkin, isn't it, you call her? But she's not here and I'm curious. It's as if there are whole years I've missed out, in spite of all the letters you and she wrote to me then. They only scratch the surface, don't they? Of the story of the girls who pin hopes, I mean.'

'Probably,' said Mara, dryly, 'If Faith's letters from Away are much to go on.'

'Mm-hm,' said Jem non-comittaly. 'There's that –but I was thinking more of the spaces between them. It's as if there was a whole other language, world even, that I can't quite get into –that no one can, maybe, though I guess Shirley got as close as anyone.'

'Walter too,' said Faith, 'for a time. It was his moniker that stuck, remember. Now, how did we begin?'

How to tell a friendship, its jokes, heartaches, its unnoticed mundanities. The little train eeled its way through stations made slippery with rain, and Faith and Mara between them pieced the story of a friendship –how they had met, and grown, and woven together until the space where one girl left off and the next began was little more than a long-unravelled seam.

They hadn't half told the whole of it by the time the train came to a halt in Halifax.

'Hold that thought,' said Jem, as he extracted the cases from the overhead perch he had earlier bundled them into. They were somewhere in the middle of their second year, including Peter's integration into their set, the College Red Cross and the wool Susan had sent Nan for spinning. 'I remember that because the fibre used to stick to the letters she was sending me –green wasn't it? Now,' with a grim look out the window, 'Catkin would say there was no hope of a walk –am I right?'

He was so right, that Faith and Mara laughed as they pulled scarves up over their heads and followed him off the train. Walk they did though, because there were no carriages going spare, everyone else having had the same thought at once. They wound their way through Halifax's close winds, heads bowed, hems growing ever heavy and ankles damp, talking intermittently of the crossing and what it would be like. On the sea, the wind had picked up, something they had been spared in Kingsport, and now it gusted towards them, brittle, damp and smelling of salt, sulphur and sodden wool. As they approached the harbour Jem grew green about the mouth and Faith succeeded in reclaiming her share of the luggage, saying affectionately as she did so, 'Poor Jem, you never have liked boats.'

'They don't stay where they should,' he said, making Mara laugh.

'They're not supposed to,' she said, for which observation Jem shot her a look as dark as the rainclouds and Faith stifled her laughter in the crook of her unencumbered elbow.

On the water, they picked up the thread of the story, partly to distract an increasingly green Jem, partly for the sake of the telling. Neither Faith nor Mara would have claimed Nan's facility with words, but in asking, it was as if Jem had turned on a tap long stuck, and now there was no stopping the current he had started. By the time they were on the train from Charlottetown they had reached the division of the girls who pinned hopes, what to other people should have been a complicated retelling. And yet somehow neither Faith nor Mara faltered as they papered the spaces of the friendship. So much, thought Jem with a smile, for Faith's to-the-point letters. There were some things distance didn't come into.

Then they were at Glen St. Mary station, announced by Dog Monday's frenetic barking as he ran giddily towards them, flinging his paws hard into his master's sternum. It would have bowled Jem over, only Faith had a firm grip of his elbow, having just used it as a ballast to alight the train. The sun was peeking thinly through the clouds, the air fresh with the mulch smell of after-the-rain, and really, considering this occasion wasn't _theirs_ their arrival at the train station hardly warranted the turnout it had got. The mothers were around them, brimming with questions about the house, and Dad wanted his opinion on one of the Isaac Reeses' without having seen the patient, Carl was telling anyone who would listen about whatever scientific finding Una had prised him away from to get him home for the weekend, Nan had engulfed him in a hug, and somewhere, out of the corner of his eye Jem caught Shirley fold Mara into a hug before turning away and deciding that confronting the familial onslaught would feel less like prying.

* * *

That Susan had outdone herself surprised no one. The silver was dazzling in its splendour, the linen thick and heavy with starch, the smell of it mingling white and crisp with the competing aromas of herbs, spices, sweets and savouries, all of which were laid out in their glory on a groaning dining table.

They did, as Anne afterwards consoled Susan, _try_ and eat. Really, they did. She herself took a thick slice of honey-glazed ham, a good portion of garden greens and a monkey-face for good measure. Gilbert, whose morning had begun at four delivering Adaline Crawford of a healthy –and decidedly breached –boy, had done slightly better, adding to the greens and the ham a healthy dose of Susan's mashed potatoes and augmenting the monkey-faces with maple fudge. But it was news they were greedy for, not food. And while they could easily _imagine_ the feast they were meant to be devouring from the scents they inhaled, there was no filling silence that Anne had yet discovered except with speaking. And they were all speaking, even Susan, who delivered herself of a spectacular tirade against governors who closed down ports and kept children away from their families even after the great cause they'd fought for was over –or words to that effect.

'That was the 'flu, Mother Susan,' said Shirley good-naturedly. 'They weren't letting anyone _anywhere_.'

This unlikely burst of italics from Shirley of all people brought them to laughter. Then the questions were back.

'Did you have it?' Gilbert wanted to know of his son.

'Where were you?' from Jem, who looked all set up, to Anne's mind, to start trading notes.

Di wondered aloud if flying had been anything like the way he supposed being a bird might have felt.

Shirley met all their questions placidly, with a word for everyone, but always with eyes only for Mara, as if he thought in looking away, she might vanish. No danger of that, thought Anne, with a glance for Mara herself, and recognising in her the look she must have worn in those days after Pacifique called at Green Gables and told her Gilbert was not dead of the typhoid after all.

Finally, when they had had their fill of catching time and the space between up, the children fell into pairs and diverged from the Ingleside hearth. Anne watched them go, Jem and Faith first, headed for the harbour light, their sweethearting haunt of old, as she recalled. Then Di and Rilla to some secret corner of the house –to talk over Walter, Anne supposed with a pang, though she was glad they could talk of him together and without rancour. How he would have loved the picture they made, his two sisters like autumnal maples, heads bent close and voices lowered in sisterly confidence. Gently Shirley slipped from his place by the hearth and with a solemn nod to Gog and Magog, put an arm around Mara and turned with her towards Rainbow Valley. If Susan clucked regret, she waited until they had gone and Anne, trading smiles with her, said only, 'Isn't it heartening to think there is still laughter and sweetness to be had from Rainbow Valley, Susan? Whatever else has been and gone, I'm glad to think that that at least is unalterable.' And Susan, gathering the crockery together, found she had no piece to say on the matter.

* * *

Nan and Jerry set off for the maple grove, her dainty hand threaded snugly into the crook of his elbow. It was the first time alone they had managed since his homecoming, between school terms, and family reunions, and village memorials, and Nan intended to savour every moment of it. The wind had picked up, sending leaves scuttling between their feet, so that Nan turned towards Jerry for shelter. It was an old habit, and it came back as naturally as breathing, as effortlessly as the wind bore the sharp scent of the Taylor Farm apples towards them.

' _Essence of winter sleep is on the night_ ,' quoted Nan, drowsily. 'I suppose I shall always find that tied to apple-season now.' Jerry's arm had long-since slipped from its decorous crutch to her hand –it was so awkward to walk that way –and wound tightly round her waist, pinning her close. Her cheek was pressed now against the bristly wool of his coat, and she thought perhaps this was what it must feel like to fall asleep in the snow. One knew one must go on but the snow was so warm, so comfortable, even safe, that there seemed no better thing in the world than to drift off to sleep in its embrace.

'Hm?' said Jerry, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

'Only something Di read me once.'

'Any good?'

'Oh, well, when it comes to poetry that really depends on –'

'Would you teach it to your Sloanes and Pyes, angel?'

That got a laugh out of her, and jolted her to attention. Nan didn't see how Jerry Meredith could debate a thing he hadn't read, but she neither did she put it past him to try.

'And horrify their parents by deviating from the Statutory Curriculum Requirements?' said in the kind of crisp capitals that were audible to the attentive listener, 'I wouldn't dare.'

'You would so,' said Jerry, kissing the crown of her head this time. 'You'd even enjoy it, even if it did land you in the kind of scrape that took four sides of letter paper to recount.'

'Stop,' said Nan and swatted ineffectually at his arm. Then, tilting her head back the better to look at him, ' _You'd_ enjoy it, you mean.'

'Long letters from you, angel? Always.'

They were deep among the maples then, the sky latticed by their interwoven crowns, the ground muted and soft with their shed leaves. They made a veritable carpet of turkey reds, fiery oranges and jocund yellows; gently Jerry took hold of her hands and tugged at them until they were both sitting among them.

'Catkin,' he said now, trying the girls' name for her on his mouth, 'I can see how they got there. Autumn suits you. You wear it well, have I ever told you?'

'Years ago,' said Nan. She had shed her gloves on sitting down, and now gathered a clutch of leaves onto the fawn of her skirt, the better to weave them into a wreath. She was deeply conscious of Jerry watching her as she worked, her long white finger pricking here the base of a leaf with a nail, there leading a fine red stalk through it.

'I'm glad,' Jerry said, still apparently riveted by her hands. 'Tell me, when was that? How did we begin, you and I?'

'Begin? I don't think we ever did. I think we just were.'

'Tell me anyway.'

She had stopped with the leaves, and now they lay like a banner across her lap, twitching gently in the breeze. Notwithstanding the snares of their tips, Jerry lay down with them, his head nestled warm against Nan's knees, content for once not to debate the finer points of the issue at hand but to listen. She began to comb her fingers through his hair and said, thoughtful, 'If it's the start you want, I suppose that would really be Rainbow Valley, wouldn't it? You and Faith leading the others over the hill, and we were having fish –trout, I think, Jem's recipe. It would have been the tail end of summer –the asters were beginning to creep, and the ivy was maenad-wild.'

'How,' said Jerry, drowsy now, 'do you remember these things, darling?'

'I hadn't thought. Some moments stick, and it's like looking at a painting in my mind. Isn't it like that with you?'

'Mm…in spots. Usually with you. All the while I was away, for instance, I kept seeing you as you'd been at the harbour light that night, silver-shod and wearing a dress that looked like the sun. But you were telling me how we began. I –well it seems important to know.'

Abruptly Nan's hand stilled, leaves and the thick cambric of her skirt rustling as she leaned forward the better to look at him. 'Is everything quite all right?' she said, one hand creeping to his forehead and tracing the creases on it. They weren't all of them familiar to her, she realised with a jolt like lightening. Realising, her disengaged hand began plucking anxiously at the green knit of her sleeve, trying ineffectually to tug it far enough to vanquish the prickles of gooseflesh that had struck up along her arms. Clumsily, Jerry raised a hand and waved her concern away. But his arm was heavy with sleep, and it only fell limp and leaden back to his side.

'Perfectly. Can't I enjoy your stories –economies they called them I think, when the war was on –as well as anyone?'

Nan hummed faintly, her sense of unease not so much lessening as lightening. With an effort, she put a stopper to it; they could argue the point another afternoon. Now Jerry needed her to be soft, Nan could feel it like a musical chord, hammering deep through her blood.

'We were in Rainbow Valley,' Jerry said now to help her. He needn't have worried. Deftly, Nan picked up the thread of that first meeting, the smell of the fire, the cold river-water, and, 'you and I debated where we should like to be buried.'

'We never did.'

'We _did_ –don't you remember? It was Faith that set everyone off on the topic, chatting away about the Methodist graveyard.'

'Faith _would_. And what did we say?'

Nan shook her head, little curls coming loose round her ears in the process. 'I think I said under a willow tree –I'd just been reading _Othello_. For the rest, all I remember only that that was the first time we –not rowed, exactly –did whatever it is you and I do though, and I thought we should never get on.'

That made Jerry laugh, his breath misting faintly against the inside of her wrist, still smoothing his forehead. 'After that?'

It is a short leap, in Nan's memory, from that first meeting to their heated arguments over the doomed Hero and Leander, and from there to the boy that whisked her behind the Glen schoolhouse the better to teach him to waltz.

'Hopeless of course,' said Nan reminiscently. 'What you really needed was someone to lead you, and that was just what I'd been taught _not_ to do…'She could sense argument bubbling in Jerry like a teakettle on the verge of whistling and moved swiftly on to their correspondence his first year at Queens before he could start.

'Some letters children of a future age would have to labour through if they got hold of those indignant pages,' she said, laughingly, 'all about the Greek middle voice, most of them.'

'Well it has no point!' said Jerry, springing suddenly up like a jack-in-the-box, and leaning forward, as he settled into the debate.

'In fact it has three, but am I telling this story or not?'

'Sorry, yes, do go on. Greek middle voice.'

'Well it's mostly letters from there. You had had the ill manners to go on to Redmond by the time I was at Queens. Though,' with consideration, 'there were a few out-of-term moments that stand out. Repton versus Rockingham on the way to prayer meeting, was an especially contentious debate for some reason, remember? And winter my second year, I have a sort of memory that the Lewisons came up and gave a Christmas ball…'

'That's right, and you wore a creamy white creation shot through with gold that made you look like the angels on Christmas trees…'

'Is that how you arrived at that name then? I've often meant to ask. It was merino wool, and I thought I'd never forgive Dad for insisting Di and I have dresses suitable to the weather. In fact it was first dress that made me feel grown up. There was no dancing, of course,' said very solemnly, brown eyes gleaming like hazelnuts, 'minister's children couldn't. Though the way I remember it, one of them talked me into a waltz out behind the hall…'

'I don't remember you especially needed persuading. The hollies were heavy with berries –'

'You wove a clutch into my hair without so much as a by-your-leave and pricked your fingers for your trouble.'

'They made you look like the queen of heaven. It was worth every prickle.'

'You stole a kiss in the process, I recall.'

'Something like this, wasn't it,' said Jerry, leaning forward and kissing her mouth. Nan's fingers, gone cold without their gloves, found the nape of his neck and settled there, and for a little while, time stood suspended.

'And after that?' said Jerry, breathless, when the interlude had passed.

'Oh there were moonlight rambles, and shadowed evening with the crickets serenading us, Jem and Faith too preoccupied by half to take notice of where we were. After that it was that walk along the shore at the harbour light, as the war came calling –and you told me not to wait.'

'Which you went and did anyway.'

'I really don't know what else you expected.'

'Nor do I, thinking about it. You do have a way, angel, for playing devil's advocate on my behalf. I've never been more glad of it.'

'Good,' said Nan, kissing him for good measure, 'that's that then.'

'Not quite. You haven't got to the end. You haven't said where we go from here.'

'Back to Ingleside,' said Nan, laughter rippling through her voice like a string orchestra, 'before we're missed and Susan has an apoplexy in the name of propriety. As for the rest,' with a fleeting kiss for his cheek, 'time enough and world enough now to parse that at our leisure, don't you think?'

* * *

The chill was less in Rainbow Valley, it had always been like that, in Shirley's memory. They would come down here in salad days, Faith, Jem, Nan, Di, Jerry and the rest, Shirley and Carl breathless with the effort of half-running to keep up, and the wind would die down, the quiet would deepen, the flowers would be richer in colour than anywhere else on the Island. It was still like that. Something to do with it being a dell, he supposed as he and Mara came to the shelter of the old birch grove. More for the tradition of the thing than especial need of it, Shirley plucked a stray ribbon of birch bark from the ground and wove a cup of it, and held it out to Mara.

'This was your place then,' she said, accepting of the cup, 'before the war?'

'Not exactly,' said Shirley, 'more theirs than mine. My especial place was on the steps outside Susan's kitchen. She was always coming out with bits of things to taste and batters to sample.'

'Naturally,' said Mara, her laugher a running counterpoint to the whispering of the bells in the tree lovers. 'With that in mind you were very good about the scarcity of Swallowgate baking.'

'To everything a season, and all that,' said Shirley lightly, 'and besides, who says that was my reason for calling?'

'That much I had worked out.'

She had tied her hair simply for ease of travelling, only a simply done chignon wound above the nape of her neck. The wind had already wreaked havoc on it; it was easy enough to prise the remaining pins out and run his fingers through it as it fell in long, flaxen waves over her shoulders. Poppy, he recalled Mara writing in one of her more recent letters, and the other girls in the little theatre company residing at Evensong house, had long since cut their hair short. Convenience as much as anything else, he remembered her saying. If it came to that, Faith and Di wore their hair likewise, and it undeniably suited them both. It also put Shirley in mind of the trains back when he'd been in England, of the way the conductor would holler as they approached the terminus, 'All change!' and brought him out in gooseflesh. Now, as he curled his hands in fists round the ends of the witching weave of golds, ambers and stray threads of copper that was Mara's hair, he felt irrationally grateful that she still wore it long. Not all change after all then.

'You asked me once to remind you what it was not to be torn in pieces,' he said, sweeping a strand of her hair out of her eyes.

'I remember.'

'I've forgotten what that's like,' said Shirley, because he could say it to her, there was no expectation between them that he be anything other than he was.

'Come here then,' said Mara, drawing him close, so that the sound of his sob, when it rose up, melted ineffectually against her skin, disappeared into the rope of her hair. She still rinsed it in jasmine, he couldn't help but notice, still wore the same scent too, light and smelling of iris and orange blossom. Not often, he recalled, casting his mind back to the haven of Swallowgate, but for what he had half-seriously called 'High days and Holy days.' She had made an occasion of today then, and the knowledge of it went through him warm and golden as a sunburst after the rain.

'I can't think of anything else,' he said now, tracing the shape of her collarbone and finding that too unchanged. It seemed impossible that she should be sitting here, weight precariously balanced on his knees, her head on his shoulder, her hands relearning the shape of his jaw and be in every particular the same as the young woman who had seen him off at the Kingsport train station at some preternaturally early hour, and yet she was, even to the sliver of a scar at her wrist. It was still faintly red, he saw now, as he bent to kiss it, just discernible by sunlight, and tasted of the salt and grit of travel and full of the perfume of the scent she wore and the dew creeping over the grass.

'Come home then,' said softly, even reverently, Mara's breath like featherdown against his ear. The birch cup slipped from her fingers as they wound gingerly into the weave of his shirt, closing tight over the place where his heart beat like some rapid, ungovernable hammer.

After years and hours of hovering on the edge of the world, enshrouded in a loneliness leavened only by her letters folded into his coat, Shirley had lost the inclination to resist.

When Mara kissed him he caught himself returning the gesture almost compulsively, compelled to give in to it, realising only as it lessened how closely coiled around his chest had been the residual traces of experience and isolation. Once –it seemed a world ago – he had made love to her safely ensconced at Swalowgate, their world of an everywhere woven of a quilt of her mother's piecing and Pilgrim the cat's imperfect guard. Shirley could still feel in his memory the pieces of her as she had been then, jagged and clawing for purpose. He kissed the hollow of her throat and found this was gentler, softer. It was an easy thing to fall forward, to kiss her lips and feel in his chest the gradual ebbing and stilling of some great and terrible tide. Even the susurration of the leaves stilled, leaving only the whisper of her perfume, the scent of her hair and the protective arch of her as Mara rose to meet him, and brought him home, and home, and home again.


	4. By the Rising of the Sun

_I swear I used to write short chapters. This is not one. I blame the fact that starting a story is a bit like moving house. Let me get all the narrative furniture in place and we should be back to averaging normal-for-me chapters. In the meantime, enjoy this one, and thanks to all of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

There was no sun when the little bedside clock declared it to be six in the morning. That was the worst part of the shortened days, Faith thought, sticking a tentative foot out of bed. Dusk at four o'clock she could bear. Somehow it wasn't nearly so demoralising to finish up the day's lectures and emerge into all-enveloping darkness. But first light, or rather the absence of it….The floor was freezing. Of course it was. The calendar was still proclaiming October, and neither she nor Jem had the nerve to fire up the radiators earlier than November. Gooseflesh crept up her leg, prickling it like the skin of a plucked chicken and she hastily tucked the aggrieved limb back under the Country Fair quilt. Cold floors were perhaps the second worst thing about autumn mornings. But at least if they asked for a carpet for Christmas –the small braid kind that could flank the bed, it would lessen the menace a bit.

' _At winter I get up at night_ ,' she murmured groggily, willing herself out of the nest of blankets, ' _and dress by yellow candlelight_ indeed.' Beside her, Jem had rolled onto his side and pulled the quilt up over his head.

'You too,' said Faith with a tug at the place where she suspected his feet were. There was a groan from the depths of the Country Fair quilt. Make that a burrow, he was that submerged.

'Isn't the department discussing next term's placement with you this morning?'

'Hm,' said Jem, agreeably enough. He was still under the quilt though. Faith, by then perched on the edge of the bed and hunting stockings from the basket at her feet, paused to throw back the quilt sufficiently to expose the mattress. That got a yelp from Jem, as he sat up and tried to gather them back into a haven.

'It's freezing!' in tones of horror.

'Not quite,' said Faith. 'Anyway, if I've got to bear it, so have you.'

It was better downstairs. Jem coaxed a temperamental fire into existence while Faith trimmed the lamps, and brought the hob to life with a hiss and a splutter. If nothing else there would be tea and toast. There might even be sunlight by the time she got out the door, or at least the promise of it.

'I thought,' she said, measuring out healthy teaspoons of Assam, 'you were looking forward to settling next term, anyway.'

Never much given to talking in the mornings, especially on dark, chill mornings that smelt of hoar frost and mulching leaves, Jem made a noncommittal noise, and something nebulous pricked at Faith's conscience. By the rose glow of the lamplight she considered following the question up with another. But her brain was still fogged with sleep, the toast was beginning to singe in the grate, the smell of it gently permeating the room and registering in her soft palate. On the stove, the kettle came suddenly to full-throttled life, and it was only as she seized it that it belatedly dawned on Faith that she ought to have warmed the teapot. She toyed briefly with the thought of emptying out the Assam leaves and making up the difference, but Jem was by then plucking toast from the teeth of the grill and there hardly seemed time. Let the tea leaves be shocked just this once.

'Our next house,' said Jem as emphatically as was possible as he sucked at a scaled thumb, 'is going to have electricity. And that, as good old Susan would say, you may tie to.'

'No argument here,' said Faith. She took his thumb in hand and gave it a critical look.

'You'll do.'

'I could have told you that,' said Jem, suddenly beaming at her. Now he was fully awake he was his usual self again. That the spiced smell of the Assam was dissipating the lingering smell of the burnt toast crusts helped not a little, Faith suspected.

'Katy Conover was worse,' said Jem, accepting a cup of imperfectly poured out tea. He made a show of studying the contents of his saucer critically before tipping them back into his teacup.

'This was that family that summoned you out at the eleventh hour yesterday?'

'Mm,' around a mouthful of toast. 'Mother had gone to town and left Katy in charge. If it hadn't all been chaos I might have had a thing or two to say about that. Dad _certainly_ would. She'd left a casserole or something bubbling on the stove, and given Katy specific instructions to watch it. Dad would have had something to say about that, too. Right, well, obviously, I'm not Dad, and there wasn't really the time. The casserole-thing had begun to boil over so Miss Katy took it into her head to just lift it off the stove and –'

Faith, with a sudden vivid recollection of her own childhood escapades, winced.

'How bad _was_ it?'

'Not very. The bulk of it got on her smock. She would have been fine if she'd thought to take off the smock, which she didn't. She got distracted fetching her brother –the youngest one, Edwin, I think he's called? –out of the kitchen and away from the mess on the floor. Sensible, but tomato sauce being what it is –all thick and heavy –she had boiling sauce seeping through the smock onto her legs. So there was that. Then of course her mother was hysterical –'

'Understandable,' said Faith, 'considering all Margaret Conover knows about medicine comes from Rilla's _Morgan_ or equivalent if it comes from anywhere.' Opposite her Jem choked violently on his tea.

'I'd nearly forgotten _Morgan_. Even he's got to be against hysterics though. Katy got off with a mild scalding, baby Edwin was fine, bar the odd smudge of tomato, and quite a lot of carbolic and yarrow salve got an airing.'

'Well that sounds all right,' said Faith, nodding over her tea, not quite sure what it was that still niggled at her conscience.

Jem didn't give her time to puzzle it out in any case. She was sipping her tea when came hurtling across the table Jem's pleasantly curious, 'Did I lose a letter of yours telling me Shirley had married Mara?'

It was Faith's turn to choke. Surprised, she inhaled rather than swallowed the mouthful of tea she had taken. It went straight to her lungs, from whence it attempted civilly to choke her.

'No,' she said, pink-cheeked and breathless, as soon as she was able. She brought her teacup halfway to her lips, then thought better of it. Jem still looked like a cat with its paw in the fishbowl, and she didn't trust him not to ambush her with another thunderbolt of a question.

'You mean it happened after you had left?'

'No-o,' with great slowness and deliberateness, 'I mean no one wrote and told you because it hasn't happened.'

Opposite her Jem blinked dazedly and Faith essayed a cautious sip of tea. It was infinitely better when it wasn't searing the inside of her nose.

'But,' said an unbelieving Jem, 'they _act_ as if they're married.'

'Well that avails you nothing. Jerry used to make that complaint of _us_ –or didn't he make it to you?'

'No. Yes. I don't remember. It was worlds ago, and that isn't the same thing at all.'

'Why not?'

Unhelpfully the mantel clock chose that moment to chime seven, and Faith never got an answer. Jem bolted what was left of his tea, kissed the top of her head and declared himself to be running late.

'I promised to call in on Agnes Blackburn,' he said, hovering at the door. 'She has pneumonia or thinks she does. It's much more likely a nasty cold. She's much too hale for pneumonia.'

Then he was gone, a whirl of red curls and brown wool coat, the only evidence that he had been there the leaves that had breached the threshold, the echo of the door as it banged shut, and that lingering disquiet at the back of Faith's mind.

* * *

It was later in the evening the root of it came home to her. The fire had burned low, throwing the thrushes on the wall into a strange indoor twilight, punctured at intervals by the rose-glow of the lamps. They were still reaching for their strawberries, and Faith, who had had the kind of day that was refusing to end, had renamed them according to doomed and aggrieved women to vent some of her frustration. She missed Jem coming in, she afterwards said, because she was bent double over a brick of a textbook that so soundly treated its readers like idiots that it took all her concentration not to roll her eyes into the back of her head. Add to which the house was so full of noises and creaks that the general clamour of his ingress, the thunk of his satchel, the stumble over the umbrella stand and felling by a stray footstool in the gloom, hardly registered.

'What's that then?' said Jem, coming to hover at her shoulder and startling out of her study-induced cocoon. Then, seeing the sprawl of shaded bones and muscles, 'I'd have thought you _knew_ all that stuff by now.'

'So did I,' said Faith, not looking up, 'after about the third or fourth surgery. I found it helped to know the kidneys from the spleen hunting bullets. I did _think_ about telling them,' with an indignant toss of her head that missed bashing Jem's nose by mere inches, 'but they were so _convinced_ I'd wandered into the theatre by mistake I thought it best not to argue. Better still not to get lax about knowing things and give them a weak point to exploit.'

'Ah,' said Jem, understanding dawning, his breath warm against Faith's head. She turned away from the book, intending to ask how the day had gone, if any decision had been reached by the department about where to place him in the Candlemas semester, when he dropped a kiss onto her forehead, and then lightly trailed them down the crown of her head, lingering over her ear, until he'd found the arch of her neck.

'What are you _doing_?' said Faith, almost laughing, because the sensation was ticklish, his breath warm and sweet against her skin. Jem was undeterred.

' _I can tell all your bones_ ,' he murmured, hardly pausing and with a kiss to Faith's shoulder. He did to, _clavicle,_ with a kiss, _acromion_ , warranting another, murmuring now _, greater tuberosity_ …he was as far as the humurus before he registered Faith's question, 'What's that from then?'

'And you a minister's daughter. It's in the Bible,' said Jem, and for all his conviction, Faith laughed. She couldn't help it. 'You didn't give Sunday School much attention, did you?' she said, and Jem, bestowing kisses along the myriad bones of her wrist, brought his head up sharply. 'I did _so,'_ in wounded tones. 'It's in Psalms.'

'Well you've misremembered that one. _I_ ,' with emphasis, 'can tell all _my_ bones. Psalm 22:17. Anyway, we can do better than that for relevance.'

'Oh?'

Faith hummed consideration, and reconciling herself to making no further progress with anatomy texts that evening, wound her arms around Jem, laid her gold head on his shoulder and said, ' _Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor. They belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy breasts are like two young roes that are twins…Thy stature is like that of a palm tree and thy breasts like clusters of grapes. I will go up the palm tree and take hold of its fruits…_ that's in the Bible too.'*

'Is it?' said Jem, breathless.

'Not really Golden Verse material, is it?' said Faith, laughing at last.

'Hardly,' said Jem, and stopped her laugh with a kiss. He had got fitted one hand to the small of her back and laced his fingers through the fine curls of her hair when there was a knock at the door.

'I'll get it,' said Faith, slipping out of his arms as she said it. It was dark in the hall; she understood as soon as she stepped into it why the umbrella stand had all but felled Jem earlier. Open, the door admitted of not much additional light, but it didn't matter. Years of sharing a house meant Faith would have known the check of Mara's coat, never mind the blue eyes that squinted at her through the dark, anywhere. It was raining –a new development –and Faith shepherded Mara into the hall with a mind for the evils of the umbrella stand.

'There's nowhere to put a lamp,' she said apologetically. 'It's enough to _almost_ make me wish for the Swallowgate end tables.'

'Those end tables were the least of it,' said Mara. They were laughing as they regained the sitting room. Jem was still standing much as Faith had left him, even to his arms akimbo around the space Faith had so lately filled.

'Thought it might be you,' said Jem, as he stood to attention. 'Shall I make tea then? Leave you two to put the universe to rights in my absence? Or whatever it is girls who pin hopes do left unattended? I sort of think it must be something like a gathering of witches only I haven't worked out the collective noun…'He darted into the kitchen chased by the cushion Faith threw after him.

'We'll pretend it was your efforts with that,' said Mara, nodding in the direction of the much-neglected textbook, 'I've intruded upon, shall we?'

'What else?' said Faith, but without much success at keeping her face straight. She never had been good at untruths, even the gentle, teasing ones.

'I'm sorry,' said mildly. 'You can blame it on the weather. The flood Noah forgot has struck up out there and you're on the way home.'

'No matter,' said Faith. 'I'll put it down in writing somewhere to expect you often this side of spring, shall I?'

'It might not be a bad idea,' said Jem, reappearing with the tea things. He considered a moment, then set them down on the floor, apparently not feeling up to the task of relocating the others to the sofa, or else loathe to disrupt the vast quantity of revision notes that occupied the coffee table. At this late juncture Faith wasn't sure whose they were, and baulked at moving them without at least a look-over herself. 'Shirley says according to Highland Sandy we're due a wet winter, and he's never been wrong before –hang on, you'll know all this, won't you, Ariel?'

Mara shrugged, and Faith said, 'Well _I_ don't, and I hope he's wrong. Wet means ice which means signal failure and being held at God-knows-where trying to get home for Christmas.' Jem having given the tea a considered jab before leaving it well alone, Faith took over the teapot. Red Rose, she noticed as she poured out. It was a rich amber colour and as staunch and round an antidote to the weather now rattling the windows as anyone could hope for. She handed Mara a mug and asked as she had used to do in Swallowgate days, 'What did your day look like then?'

It was as Mara was recounting the politics of the little reparatory that it came to Faith what had niggled her so much about the retelling of Katy Conover's misadventure. In spite of the politics and the fact that to hear Mara tell it the upcoming performance was three weeks away and nowhere near where it should be, she still managed to look as if someone had struck a match to her soul in the telling. _Spirit and fire and dew_ , Faith had heard Mother Anne call it in a poetic burst. She had been talking of Dr. Blythe and his work, and Faith had known almost instinctively what she had meant. _Spirit and fire and dew_. Years and she had caught glimpses of it in the people around her. It was there in Nan when she told one of her economies, in her father as he declaimed his sermons from the height of the pulpit, even Una had it as she sat unassuming at the piano, playing not so much with her hands as with the whole of her body, from delicate fingers to slight shoulders to the swaying stalk of her spine as it shifted with the notes. It was there in Mara now, notwithstanding the fact that actors were apparently about as herdable as cats and harder dictated to. Where it _hadn't_ been was anywhere discernible in Jem as he recounted the story of little Katy and the casserole. A little thing, but an unsettling one, because it had always used to be there. Before the war. A lifetime ago. She would have asked about it, doctoring and the scheme for someday taking over the Glen so long adhered to, waived as a banner of what would come, but it was hardly the time. They had a guest, and were, judging from the knocking at the door, due another.

'Shirley's knock,' said Mara, rising to go, belatedly remembering Larkrise wasn't Swallowgate. Faith laughed, so did Jem.

'We're _never_ on his way back to the boarding house,' said Jem, incredulous, when he could speak again.

'You are if he's come from Fox Corner, out behind the wood,' said Mara. 'He did say he was wanted out that way –the dogs I think.'

The knock came again, and Faith waved Mara towards the door.

'You go,' she said. 'He'd far rather your company to ours, I'm sure.'

Mara went and alone with the thrushes and their strawberries Jem turned to Faith and said, 'You're absolutely sure you didn't miss –'

' _Certain_. You might be the sort to lose track of weddings, I wouldn't. Not that one anyway.'

'Besides,' said Shirley, dropping down onto the floor opposite his brother, and from the look of him, trying hard not to laugh, 'there's an order to these things. Houses, money, all the dull things that need to be in place first.'

'Right,' said Faith now, hauling herself to her feet, 'You two convince him where I can't, I'll fetch another mug.'

She went, and returned to find Shirley sitting with his hand clasped around the slip of Mara's ankle, which considering Mara's hems had preserved their old-world length in spite of the shift in fashion, was a feat which should have taken considerably more effort than it had. Jem was studiously observing the thrushes on the walls, who had progressed not a bit towards the capture of their assorted strawberries.

'My favourite,' said Faith as she rejoined them, startling Jem and the courting couple to attentiveness, 'is Medea. Just there,' she nodded in the direction of a cluster of birds next to the mantle.

'I'm glad you can tell them apart,' said Jem. 'They're much the same to me.' He allowed Faith to replenish his tea. Shirley, who had after all come from Fox Corner, launched into a detailed account of the resident hound whose leg had wanted setting. Hard to believe, Faith thought as she listened, that he'd only followed them back to Kingsport a matter of weeks ago, and that on a whim to see if a long-standing arrangement with Dr. Findley the veterinarian would hold. It had, and now here he was talking Fox Corner, its dogs and their assorted injuries.

Somehow it fell out that their guests didn't stay long after that, though Faith offered to replenish the hot water.

'Hardly weather for going out,' she said to no one in particular as she fished for an umbrella to send them on their way. The rain was still beating a relentless tattoo on the windows and in the hallway the cold had begun to creep under the gap between door and floor, nipping viciously at the ankles of anyone who chose to tarry there.

'We'll do,' said Mara.

'Go by the woods and I expect you'll notice it less,' said Jem, for which he received a well-aimed jab to the shins from his brother, who had by then claimed the umbrella.

They hovered at the door long enough to wave the others on their way, their faces growing spackled with rain for their trouble.

'Hardly a night for sweethearting,' said Jem with affection as he watched them go. 'Mind you,' as he shuttered the lamps for the night, 'I do miss that.'

'What? Walks in the pouring rain? Did we have so many?' said Faith, knowing full well that wasn't what he meant.

'Purpose,' Jem managed more lightly than Faith thought she might have under the same circumstance. 'They've both got it, wouldn't you say?'

'In spades. And so have you –just perhaps not for general practice. No harm in that.'

'Mm,' said Jem, burrowing under the Country Fair quilt. 'This though, this I _can_ do.' He folded his arms tight around Faith, so that she could smell the residual traces of carbolic lotion still on him, mixed with the smell of the tea and the onion that had flavoured their supper. Pepper too, she thought, and the lavender pouches she tucked behind the pillows in the mornings…'Remind me though,' said Jem, voice whispering against her hair and interrupting her train of thought, 'How did it go? _I will go up the palm tree…'_

' _And take hold of its fruits…_ '

* * *

Jem was writing up a prescription for Tilly Lyons when the man appeared. Tall, gaunt, silver-haired and with an air of bristly insistence about him that demanded not only attention but that the person giving it do so with straight shoulders and a back like an arch. Reflexively Jem stood up, the prescription half-written and extended a hand, even as the man said, 'Dr. Blythe?'

'Not quite yet,' said Jem, and smiling in spite of himself. Opposite him the man's eyebrows drew together momentarily. 'Jem, they call you, isn't it?'

Jem nodded, and the man's face cleared. 'Good,' he said. 'Geordie Carlisle, inspector. I want to borrow you. The university seems to think you might help.'

He was walking out of the little office that was Jem's in great, long strides that meant Jem had to half run to keep up.

'Heard of Caleb Williams?' asked Carlisle as they went. Jem's brow prickled in concentration, because the name did sound familiar. Where had he come across it?

'In the papers, wasn't it sir?'

Carlisle nodded. 'Unfortunate business.'

'Quite,' said Jem, breathless. 'But I don't see how I can –'

'You can tell us what happened to him,' Carlisle said, anticipating Jem's question. 'Dr. Greaves has had to retire and it turns out police surgeons are rare as hen's teeth. Would you have guessed?'

'No,' said Jem truthfully, for which he was dealt a disarming blow to the back, what he thought the other man had probably intended as an encouraging pat.

'Makes two of us then –oh and Teddy Lovall owes me a dollar. Remind him, won't you?'

Jem forbore to point out he had no idea who Teddy Lovall was and settled for making a noise deep in his throat to be interpreted as Carlisle saw fit. By then they were walking the cool halls of what Jem supposed must be the station house. They lacked the medicinal smell of carbolic and ether that he'd grown to know so well, and yet the general impression of regimented order was the same. Carlisle's doing, Jem thought, or pigs could fly.

Someone –Williams, Jem supposed –was laid out on a table, his skin, what Jem could see of it above the sheeting, mottled white, red and blue. The blue, he thought, would be the cold of the place. It was seeping into his bones even as he stood half a pace behind Carlisle, the iodized smell of it not miles from his father's surgery. Except that the Ingleside surgery had never hosted dead bodies in Jem's memory. As much to dissipate the chill as anything else, he began to make a circuit of the patient –body? –taking note of abnormalities as he went.

'Now,' said Jem, as he walked, 'what happened to you?'

'Are you…talking… to him, Doc?' asked the youth in the corner. From the way he handed a dollar unconcernedly over to the inspector Jem took him for Teddy Lovall.

'You should always talk to your patients, sergeant,' said Jem, with a nod to the badge affixed to Lovall's coat, and grinned at him before returning his attention to Williams. There was a half-formed bruise emerging along the left jaw. He'd be interested to see how it came up, of course, but in the meantime, Jem felt safe assuming it had come from someone's right hand. He found a half-moon birthmark under the left ear, though no sign of injury to the head.

'Someone's tried to strangle him,' said Jem to his audience, 'only it didn't take. You see? Just here.' He shaped the area over the young man's throat for Carlisle with a hand. Lovall hung back, looking faintly green about the gills.

'Didn't take, you say?' asked Carlisle, interested. 'How can you tell?'

'See here? That's the hyoid bone.' Jem ran a finger delicately along it in demonstration. 'It's not broken. And his mouth is wrong for strangulation –he was breathing fine, whatever did him in. Blood under his nails too. I'd guess at some point someone tried to strangle him and he fought back, so they abandoned the strangling and…'

'Doc?' prompted Lovall from the safe distance of the doorframe he was leaning against. Dimly Jem thought he ought to set Lovall straight about his medical status then decided the information would keep.

'Now that _is_ odd,' he said, more to Williams than anyone else.

'His ribs?' asked Carlisle, obviously perplexed. 'What about them?'

'Nothing,' said Jem, 'which is the odd thing. I was going to say our attacker had opted to push him instead –stairs or something – but there's nothing to suggest that happened. Just this contusion over the liver…mind if I have more of a look at him?'

'Please,' said Carlisle. In the doorway Lovall shifted uneasily from one foot to another, and the detective laughed, which saved Jem the effort of trying not to.

'Off you go then, Teddy,' said Carlisle indulgently. 'Have a read over that statement we got, see if it yields anything that even _hints_ of a lead.'

Lovall –or Teddy –it was getting increasingly hard, Jem found, to keep thinking of him as a disassociated last name –nodded smartly. He was halfway down the hall when he doubled back to inquire, 'What'll you do, sir?'

'Me?' asked Carlisle needlessly, 'I think I'll see how this goes. Mac would never let me. You don't mind?'

'No,' said Jem partly because he genuinely didn't mind, partly because even if he had, he could see no way of turning him down. He folded back the sheet that shrouded Williams and watched amused, as the older man picked up a scalpel, considered it, then handed it over to Jem before settling back against the sink basin and beginning to whistle something giddy and improbable sounding.

'Know any Gilbert and Sullivan?' asked Carlisle, abruptly curtailing whatever-it-was. The tune was catching, sort of a musical mosquito, Jem thought, and was now circling his head as he sifted through the contents of Williams' stomach.

'No,' said Jem. This was obviously the wrong answer, because it set Carlisle off on a brief history of operetta. Jem went on sorting through organs, nodding whenever it seemed appropriate.

'Aha,' said Jem, unthinking, as he looked over the liver. It was like tripping a switch; gone was the connoisseur of musical satire and back with a vengeance was the man that had plucked Jem out of his office at nine in the morning without so much as a by-your-leave.

'Found something, have you?'

'I may have. The liver's ruptured.'

'And that killed him, did it?'

'Yes, I should say so. See all the blood?'

Carlisle shook his head, and Jem waved a hand in the direction of the liver cavity.

'All internal, sorry, should have said.'

'Right,' said Carlisle. Unfolding a pair of spectacles, he peered closely in the direction Jem was pointing, looking for all the world like a parent humouring a child's pet fantasy.

'I'm afraid I'm going to have to take your word for it,' he said at length, folding away the spectacles. 'Now, what are we looking at? Could a person have done it?'

Jem gave the liver a judicious prod. 'It doesn't seem to have been in great nick to start with and if you look at the skin around the area, just here…'Sensing the other man's confusion, Jem gingerly tapped the area in question with a finger.

'It's bruised,' said Carlisle, nodding.

'Mostly superficial damage though,' said Jem, 'bar the liver obviously.'

Opposite him Carlisle was still nodding. Jem could all but hear him thinking in time to the clock on the wall. 'A punch,' he said now, 'if someone had punched him, could that have done it?'

'If they knew what they were about, I should say so, yes.'

'Good –ah, Teddy, just in time.' Carlisle raised a hand in greeting to the young man now jogging down the corridor. Jem followed suit, raising a blood-spattered hand in spite of himself. He couldn't help it. The boy –and he _was_ a boy, Jem saw now, albeit a very tall one –was grinning as if Christmas had come early.

'Got something for you,' he panted as he came in sight, clutching at the doorframe for support. He began a garbled recitation of something and Jem found himself raising his hands again to stop him.

'Better get your breath back first,' he heard himself say. 'No good to the inspector if you collapse from over-exertion or something.'

Teddy did, pausing to gulp a hasty mouthful of breath before launching into the theory of the moment.

'Well,' said Carlisle impatiently when Teddy had rattled to a stop, 'Better get going, hadn't you? I've paperwork to do. Oh,' with a sudden burst of inspiration, 'take the Doc with you. Might need his bedside manner if you're calling on Williams' wife.'

Jem made another effort to protest his nebulous medical status, but no one appeared to be listening. He'd hardly finished when he found he was compelled to jog off after Teddy, who had bolted from the room at the first opportunity and was now running like a gazelle for the outdoors. Jem couldn't blame him; after the cool, compressed air of the station house, it was refreshing to be outside with the snap and crackle of the wind and the leaves rocketing around underfoot, sun streaming into their eyes. Here and there a stray crab apple made them stumble, but even that was a welcome relief after the solemn silence of Williams' icy entombment. They slowed to a brisk walk somewhere in the vicinity of St. John's graveyard, 'Because,' said Teddy, sounding as if he meant it, 'you can't run past a graveyard.'

'No,' said Jem, grinning, 'just whistle past.' When Teddy's face registered only confusion, Jem elaborated, 'You didn't do that as a kid? Whistle past the graveyard to keep the ghosts away?'

'No,' said Teddy. Then, 'Does it work?'

'No idea,' said Jem, and grinned. 'But we always did it, me and Walter and the others.' If he stumbled a bit over Walter's name, Teddy took no notice. Easily they shifted from graveyards to the morning, to Williams and what had happened to him, Jem doing his best to catch Teddy up up on the morning's findings in a way that wouldn't turn the lad green again. No good their turning up at Williams' home with the active sergeant looking ill.

'Er,' said Teddy as they nearer the house, 'do we tell her about the…rupture was it…you found in the liver?'

'Well don't look at _me_ ,' said Jem. 'All I do is name the cause. The rest is up to you.'

Somehow they managed. By the time they came away they were swapping impressions of Mrs Williams and the house, a modern affair with bay windows and a quantity of ivy that had been left to run riot in the garden. They were still talking when Jem looked up and found himself outside Larkrise.

* * *

Faith heard them even before they gained the hallway, talking animatedly about she had no idea what.

'…didn't feel _right_ ,' a tall, brackish lad was saying as he unburdened himself of his coat and draped it over the hall table.

'Here,' said Faith, 'I'll take that.'

'Sorry,' said Jem, 'I meant to warn you…He looked as if it was the first time this thought had crossed his mind and Faith wanted to laugh. Partly at the look of him, all light and –no other word –blithe, but also because he said it as if it were a great imposition he was visiting upon her, as if never in the course of all those Swallowgate days had they regularly ambushed one another with a guest or two or three at mealtimes.

'I didn't like that either,' he said next to the young man who had come in with him, 'She was very evasive when you tried to find out about the other evening.'

Faith paused in the hanging of coats and hats to look confusedly between them. She went to hunt out the crockery needed to augment the place settings and still they went on talking contusions, reactions and all sorts. She was tucking a napkin through a metal ring when the thought ambushed her, _There it is_ , and she had to pause to watch them again. _Spirit and fire and dew_ , she thought, feeling it somewhere in the region of her gut. She had no idea what they were talking about, only that they were both lighted up with enthusiasm for the subject at hand. That murder from the morning headlines, she realised as the conversation progressed. How had Jem become embroiled in it? It didn't matter. He looked like a tinder ignited by a stray bit of flint, and that was enough.

At length, seeing her starting to lay out the table, he detached himself from their guest to help transition food to the table, and it was then he dropped a kiss on her forehead and asked, half-apologetic, 'Do you mind?'

Faith braced a casserole dish against her side and shook her head. 'Not for worlds,' she said, finding she meant more than the unannounced company. 'Not for worlds.'

* * *

* _Faith and Jem are quoting Song of Solomon chapter 7. If you're confused as to how that squeaked into the canon of the bible, don't look to me for an answer. The council in question rejected Judith, declined Susannah and somehow_ _let this stray piece of a love poem through. If you can parse that one for me, by all means do._


	5. They Do It With Hatpins

_Another thing I used to be good at: prompt updates. But I had (still have really) the cold that won't end, was moving house, and then in bizarre duo, spent a day attending a Scottish Country Dance workshop before going on to host a Beatles Tribute Fundraiser. And frankly, I defy you to do anything besides practice the Strathspey footwork when mid-dance. Go on, try it and get back to me._

 _I should probably say too that if pieces of this chapter look referential to detective fiction, they are. No other genre is quite so replete with backward-glances and nods to itself, and I fully intend to play within the rules of that tradition -and play fair. Also, you're still not getting a short chapter. I appear to be out of practice. So as ever, send feedback, and thank you always to all of you reading and/or reviewing._

* * *

Larkrise was bustling. They had converged upon it around midmorning, Jem, Carlisle and Teddy because the station house was too impossibly cold to discuss the case of the moment without chattering teeth, Jerry brandishing a letter from Nan that boasted of Christmas plans. All of this had completely upended the morning Faith had intended to devote to the mountain of coursework she had accrued in the run up to the holdiay, but it was of little consequence. The unfortunate demise of Prudence Wentworth –Tuppence to friends apparently –who had been stabbed with a hatpin, had proved far more interesting than impending essays be their deadlines ever so close. Much more productive to make them up tea and contribute opinions, all of which, for a novelty, were seized upon gladly by the baffled members of what Faith had since learned was the county's 87th precinct. Even that though, had capitulated in the face of Jerry with his letter and insufficient stomach for murders.

'What,' Faith had said, incredulous, as he unfolded the letter in question, 'you never mean we get to hear the contents?'

Jerry had shrugged unconcernedly and said, 'Some of them, you do,'and effectively curtailing any further discussion of what Faith had now mentally dubbed 'The Hatpin Murder' began a recapitulation.

 _Avonlea Schoolhouse_

 _Nov -1920_

 _November skies, as the song has it, are often grey, and the flowers go to sleep. Also the leaves line lover's lane and the Haunted Wood and paint them in sunset dyes until December snows cover them, though the lyric doesn't mention that._

 _The children had it for their music exercise this week, which is no doubt why I'm thinking it. We finally reached the last verse today, so all around Avonlea supper tables parents are likely being horrified by that line about how the trees 'Haven't got a thing to wear/and they want a dress of snow.' I'd quite forgotten it featured, or I might have made an effort to look for something else. But I've always loved it, and all the things that stuck about my own schooldays are the things my teachers were passionate about –Marvel, Shakespeare, and that ekphrasis about the tapestry in Catullus –do you remember? I can never see or do tapestry now without thinking of it, 'Ariadne with sad eyes looks at him/ from afar, from the rocky seaweed like the statue of a Maenad.' That probably has as much to do with my dislike of tapestry as the sheer dullness of tent stitch. Though all this was to say that that was why I gave them 'November Skies' in the first place –I've always loved the poetry of it and thought perhaps my love of it would make it stick better than more mundane selections._

 _Di was down at the weekend, which is what I really wanted to write to you about._ _Glen Notes_ _are as immoveable as one of those rocks by the water's edge you get in Psalms, so she's hatched another plot, but it means we're coming to you for Christmas…_

'Hang on,' said Jem, abruptly breaking off discussion with Carlisle and Teddy in the name of family logistics, 'they're doing _what_?' Beside him the inspector swallowed his tea the wrong way and suffered Teddy to thump him heavily on the back.

'I thought this was your family under discussion, Doc?' said Teddy, eyes gleaming.

'It is. Well, mostly. They're all so mixed up together at this stage that the world has a better chance of untangling that tapestry-thingummy Catkin was on about. What did she call it?'

'Ekphrasis,' said Jerry, easily filling the space. 'Rather an interesting rhetorical technique if you –'

'Never mind all that,' said Faith, impatient. 'Jem's right, there's more of them than us. It makes far more sense that we go to them for the holidays. Besides, it's practically a tradition, Ingleside Christmases.'

'So they'll come here three Christmases together and make that the new tradition,' said Jerry with a shrug. 'Isn't that how the old saw goes? Once is an event, twice is a habit, three times is tradition? Look, do you really want to dissuade conspiring Ingleside twins? Nan alone I could just about run to. Maybe. On an especially lucky day.'

Teddy and the inspector, Faith couldn't help but noticed, had relaxed against the sofa and were sipping their tea leisurely, obviously finding the scene vastly entertaining, the affair of the Hatpin Murder temporarily shelved.

'You might enjoy it,' said Carlisle now, 'an excuse to show off the house and all that.'

'They'd have to bring Monday,' said Jem, to no one in particular. 'Always assuming he'd _board_ a train. He still hasn't forgiven the one that took me away to the war, as far as I can tell. And we'd need silver…Susan will expect…do we _have_ silver?'

The apostle teaspoons?' said Faith. 'Do those count? They'd need polishing obviously, but…'she shrugged, helplessly.

From the sofa came noises of further choking, and Faith spared the inspector and his sergeant half a glance on the off-chance she was needed to resuscitate anyone. She wasn't, though the inspector was distinctly red in the face.

'I think, maybe Sir,' Teddy was saying, ''enjoy' wasn't quite the word to go for.'

'We have apostle teaspoons?' said Jem, perplexed, even as Jerry prepared what sounded like a similar volley. More coughing and wheezing from the sofa contingent, this particular joke having evidently struck Teddy too.

'From Rosemary,' said Faith, 'for a wedding present. We didn't exactly give her time to conjure anything else. You must remember them Jerry. Una used to say St Andrew was impossible to polish.' This sentence ended in a groan as realisation dawned that if Una –Una who _enjoyed_ silver polishing –had found Andrew's saltire and accompanying angles impossible to polish then St Andrew of the teaspoon was doomed to be tarnished for the foreseeable future.

'You'll enjoy it,' said Carlisle with all the warmth of one observing from a safe distance. 'And it's bound to make a good story. Have I told you about the first Christmas Judith and I…'

'But where do we _put_ them all?' said Jem, returning to the sheer illogic of the proposal.

'I was getting to that,' said Jerry, brandishing the letter. 'They've got it all plotted out. Naomi –that's one of your aunt's girls I think? –is giving them the key to Swallowgate, as she and the others won't be needing it over the holiday, so she and Di can set up there…'

'You'll want to join them, I suppose?' said Jem to Faith.

'No…but Mara probably will. Catkin isn't thinking of sending anyone to her, is she?'

Jerry shook his head. 'No. She says something about Evengsong being overrun with people as it is.'

'Well she's not wrong. Jem, we must be wasting your inspector's time unbearably.'

'On the contrary,' said Carlisle from his corner seat by the crackling fire, 'I'm enjoying this. Sort of heartening to know other people get corralled into talking seating arrangements as the festive season approaches. I'd begun to think it was a pet hobby of Judith's. Do go on,' and he helped himself to another cup of tea, brandishing the teapot helpfully for anyone worn out by talk of holiday plans. Cups duly went all-hands-round in a reel of 5 for bone china, and Jerry picked up the thread of Nan's letter again, sending the Blythe and Meredith adults to Patterson street –Susan too, I presume – leaving the college-attending contingent to the mercy of their boarding houses, and –'

'Spider to come to us,' said Jem, finishing for him, while his colleagues raised their eyebrows. 'Good Lord, they've plotted it to the letter.'

'Nan generally does,' said Jerry. 'Her essays always read that way too. Water tight. I expect her lesson-plans are the same, right down to the ones about autumnal music selection.'

Jem snorted. To Carlisle he said, 'There's still something not right about the hatpin nonsense, you know.'

'I know. Mull it over as you draft seating arrangements, why don't you? It's my evening to supervise schoolwork, and there'll be a small Armageddon if I'm late. Do let me know how you get on though.' So saying he extracted himself from his chair, plucked Teddy's empty cup from his hands and strode purposefully towards the door. Teddy, taking his cue from his superior, rose likewise, bit with less conviction. He had one tentative foot through the door to the hall when Faith said, 'Stay to dinner if you like, Teddy, we won't mind,' and stopped the boy short. He stumbled over his feet, collided with a swathe of thrush-papered wall, and asked as he sat up to rub what was almost certainly a bruised ankle, 'Sure you won't mind?'

'Certain,' said Jerry, grinning at him. 'They put up with me, and I don't always give them fair warning either.'

'Yes, but they _know_ you,' said Teddy, unconvinced.

'We know you too, now,' said Jem. 'We know you different. Now, about Miss Wentworth…'

* * *

The visiting party duly arrived, Christmas Eve nipping at their heels and the holiday week spread out before them like some hopeful standard; Jem, with Faith, Shirley and the Kingsport Merediths watched them alight from the train, Susan's austere grey travelling clothes billowing dangerously around her ankles. Anne had her carpet bag in hand, and her eyes upturned to the sky as though trying to catch nascent snowflakes on her nose. It wasn't the staying kind of snow though, notwithstanding the biting easterly wind that had found out the vicinity of Kingsport and rendered the platform a distinctly inhospitable meeting place. The twins came next, arm in arm, heads together, hands flying in animated debate, causing no end of risk to their cases –or perhaps only the knees they collided with –in the process. There was Rilla, trying to look serene and stately and too travel-worn to manage it, and Bruce, hurtling like a meteor towards them.

'Jem,' he cried lustily as he ran, 'Jem! The train went ever so fast! Faster even than the Flying Scotsman!'

'Hasn't that one been outclassed for speed?' whispered Jerry to Nan as he came to meet her. Nan only tossed her head in disapproval that wasn't even surface-deep and said, 'You'll spoil his fun, darling.'

'Never,' said Jerry, and kissed her ear as it glanced gently off his shoulder in passing.

By then the Rev Meredith had emerged and taken his girls in his arms, and was murmuring apologies about not getting away sooner or for longer.

'No one ever wants to fill Christmas Eve,' said Una mildly to her father's greatcoat, 'or Advent IV either. Too near the holiday.' Faith began similarly dismissing his concern but never got as far as voicing it, because at that juncture bobbed into view a sleek dark head and owlish grey eyes.

' _Mouse_!' said several girls at once, families temporarily forgotten.

'You never _said_ ,' Faith indignantly said over her shoulder to a bewildered Jerry, obviously oblivious to the offense.

'How was I to know?' he asked of Jem. 'All Nan said was _Mouse is coming too_ , and for all I knew that was the Avonlea cat. Ingleside has had stranger feline christenings, after all.'

'Mouse,' said Nan firmly, steering Poppy towards Jerry. She made no further introduction, though, because Poppy, confronted with this tall, dark stranger, only widened her eyes owlishly and said, 'Jerry.' And in answer to his confusion, 'You look like your photo. Faith never had one too far away. It was of all of you.' Then as she tilted her head in consideration, 'She was right, by the by, Nan's Lord Harrington _does_ look like you.'

'That's us well and truly surplus to requirements for the foreseeable future, wouldn't you say?' said a strange voice at Jem's ear, making him jump. Shirley knew it though, that was evident because he clapped the speaker on the back, and said, 'You look well. Ontario suits you and Mouse, then,' and thereafter pitched in to help with the desolate luggage now dotted about their part of the platform. Jem joined him, and Jerry shortly followed, and somehow, between retrieving cases, accommodating hat boxes and paying the attendant porter, Shirley negotiated introductions so that by the time the girls who pinned hopes were walking away in a knot, Jerry had identified the speaker as Peter of Swallowgate days.

'Family don't mind us borrowing you?' asked Shirley as they went, and Peter shrugged awkwardly, encumbered by the luggage.

'Poppy wished it,' he said easily. 'None of us is particularly good at going against her.'

'No,' said Shirley with a nod to the knot of the girls as they wove their way out of the station, arms linked, 'I can't say I recall meeting anyone that was.'

It was too cold to walk idly through the snow, for which reason they reached Swallowgate long before the others had caught them up, even hampered by baggage. Dr. Blythe had waved them on at the last crossing to say he and the others would carry on to Patterson Street and catch them up later.

'No key, of course,' said Jem. 'Your Catkin will have it, I suppose.' This to Jerry.

'Much more theirs, by that name,' said Jerry, but without rancour. More uneasily, to Shirley, rootling about the edge of the flower beds, he said, 'Are you trying to get us done for burglary or what?'

That brought laughter from the men who had been on nodding terms with Swallowgate, especially when, by way of answer, Shirley held up a long, flat key.

'Naomi Blake's set have moved it,' was all he said. 'Mara used to keep it just over the eaves.'

'Yes but Mara's tall enough to retrieve it from there –odds are this lot aren't,' said Peter reasonably. 'Much better leaving it to the guardianship of the stone turtle. I always thought it looked too menacing by half for this house.'

'They were laughing when they stumbled into the hall, nearly tripping over the awkwardly lodged end table set by for collecting mail.

'Is it much changed?' asked Jem, who had never seen Swallowgate when it had belonged to the girls who pinned hopes. He cast about it in the three o'clock sunlight, going gently grey with weather and tried to picture them there. Jerry was obviously doing it too, eyes traversing the little vestibule from ornate umbrella stand to the blue-and-yellow china shepherdess weighing down the Christmas mail. There was a new clutch of it arrived since the house had been vacated. Jem bent to retrieve it and acting by example, lodged it with reservation under the shepherdess, leaving her wobbling precariously. That did it, and in a flash he had conjured Faith, pink with excitement tearing through that door and wildly endangering the continued existence of anything so delicate, perhaps stumbling on the combination of coconut matting and the afternoon post. But no, he thought suddenly, because they had all been watching for the post like hawks, their letters had said so. Her satchel then, catching the shepherdess unawares –that's how it would have gone.

Then the girls were there, unburdening themselves of coats, hats and gloves, laughing and chattering, and exclaiming over how they could possibly be standing like so many lemons in the hall still and that with the door open.

'It's cold enough without that,' said Di briskly, slipping past them and heading purposefully towards the kitchen, Mara a half step behind her.

* * *

Nan had vanished too. Jerry found her kneeling over the fire sizing up suitable kindling.

'You're good at that,' he said, sitting down adjacent to her, 'to say it was never your job, angel.'

'No, well, there wasn't anyone else to do it.' She passed a stick of something under her nose and smiled sudden as a sunburst. 'Applewood,' she said, and added it to the burgeoning log cabin in the grate.

'Did you have it often then?'

'No, only when we could get it. Cedar and birch more often, though in a house with this many hidden draughts you don't pause to take issue with the wood overmuch.'

'Definitely not,' said Faith, startling Jerry. She was ensconced on the window seat, bristling with contentment. 'All it wants is elfwort, or whatever its proper name is. Did we ever know it?'

'Helen's Tears,' said Mara, who to judge from the tea tray, had succeeded at wresting the tea things from Di, 'and it's the wrong season entirely. Besides, did we ever have that in the house?'

'No,' said Poppy, falling into one of the squashy chairs and all but vanishing. Kneeling by the fire, it was vastly apparent to Jerry what the others had meant earlier about being surplus to requirements. He caught at Nan's hand as it hesitated over the kindling, pressed her fingers to his lips and said comfortably, 'We'll visit later, darling,' before taking his leave of them.

* * *

Later turned out to be a Christmas Eve spent at Larkrise, the day itself having passed in the secrecy of gift-wrapping and long-overdue reunions that left little time for sweethearting. It would have been difficult in any case, since entry into any room was perforce preceded by cries of 'Who is it?' more often than not followed by, 'No, you can't come in here –wait a minute!' as paper rustled madly.

By the time they did come together the Morris-papered walls verily hummed with crosswise conversation. What Jerry still caught himself considering the adults –the Blythes, with the Blakes and Father and Rosemary –were debating the finer points of what sounded like different synoptic Christmas stories in one corner, while Shirley and Peter talked over remember-whens, Jem gamely joining in as best he could –no doubt supplying stories from bygone years if Jerry had to guess. The girls who pinned hopes had forgathered by the fire and were talking animatedly over Jerry knew not how many months of news, but from the sound of it, they'd all heard it in letters anyway. They were also beginning, he realised, to remember the rest of the company, occasionally looking over a shoulder to take stock of the room and its people. Rilla, Jerry couldn't help but notice, flitted between them all trying to find somewhere to settle, and ended closeted in a shadowed corner with Una, whatever they were talking over obscured by the general chatter of the others.

Through it all Susan clattered away in the little galley kitchen, scaring up a Christmas feast that _was_ a feast, not to say quite beyond the usual fair seen by the spindly dining table. Now and then she punctured their merriment with exclamations of horror, the most recent of which, 'Faith dear, have you noticed there's no _jam cupboard?!_ '

Faith caught Mrs. Blythe's eye across the room and said _sotto voce_ , 'Do I tell her I've never understood why houses have those?'

There were peals of laughter, but before anyone could answer in the negative there were further lamentations over the imperfections of the oven.

'It's sort of like the Jekyll-and-Hyde cat,' said Faith, disentangling herself from the girls by the fire and going and leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, 'it has moods.'

Whatever the stove's shortcomings, they fazed Susan not at all. The air was already heavy and warm with the dampness of drying wool, the roaring of the fire and so many people together in one place. They were presently added to by the sweet tang of chutney, and the buttery scent of perfected pastry, of minced and spiced beef, and the crisp savour of roasted potatoes as Susan bore out a magnificent tray laden with tortierre and its accompaniments to the table. There being no extension that would have comfortably accommodated all of them around it, they took their dinner about the room, forgathering on windowsills and in corners, occasioning more horror from Susan, but enjoying themselves no less for that.

So quickly had it been conjured that as Nan observed to Jerry as they took their plates to an inglenook, 'I'm not at all convinced Susan didn't magic it out of thin air.'

Jerry considered a brussel sprout thoughtfully. 'Your Mara maybe. Susan's much too Presbyterian to magic anything out of anywhere.'

That won a laugh like a string orchestra from Nan, her eyes warm and liquid in the firelight. He had said at last meeting that autumn suited her, but it was all things golden, really, even and including the flaring of the fire as it popped and crackled in the grate.

'You're probably right. I've been trying to decide if the tortierre is a point on Susan's part or not. I tend to think not.'

'Should it be?' asked Jerry, raising his eyebrows.

'You tell me. I don't remember us doing Fast Days and Feast Days.'

'We don't, no. This would be on Poppy's account?'

'Hardly. No one needs to make any points about Mouse.'

Jerry's eyebrows rose still further, disappearing into his hairline. 'I don't recall you mentioning that.'

'No, well, the way I remember it, Poppy sort of unwittingly ambushed the rest of us with that detail –I think she thought it was common knowledge. Which it should have been really, between Barra being the one Catholic Western Isle and it not being on Mouse's account we got into the habit of not eating Good Friday.'

'You did _what_?' said Jerry, driven to italics, there being no further option open to register his incredulity.

'You try cooking in a household where someone's actively not eating sometime and tell me how it goes, won't you? We'd all have felt guilty about it, mostly because of the way the cooking got into the walls. You could always anticipate mealtimes at Swallowgate.'

'I see,' Jerry said.

He could too: he wouldn't have said their corner was on nodding terms with the little spindly-legged dining table, and yet it took no effort to pick out the competing smells of the meal. The tortierre and chutney had largely gone, but that still left the potatoes with their rub of rosemary and thyme, the fresh, yeasty smell of the last of the rolls, and now too the ineffable smell of warm shortbread, mince pies and candied fruit as Susan carried them from the kitchen, Mara an elbow's length away with necessaries for tea and coffee. Someone, Jerry couldn't help but notice, had even polished the Apostle teaspoons, right down to the saltire of St. Andrew.

* * *

Mara had barely laid the tea tray down when Gilbert waylaid her, mince pie and shortbread folded into his large brown hand.

'I've been meaning to ask,' he said mildly, 'about our September surprise as it were –did you know? Faith said not, but I wondered if she said that in case we took exception to a conspiracy.'

'Did you?'

'No.'

'Well then,' said Mara, blue eyes laughing.

'You did know, then?'

'I'll thank you not to look at _me_ for that particular adventure,' said Mara. She really was laughing now, a golden, glistering sound. 'I've only just begun to get Poppy's name right on letters. I was hardly angling for another change to keep track of.'

'She has you know,' said Poppy, appearing on Gilbert's other side. 'Peter was beginning to say she might do better to send all my post care of Mouse.'

'Peter,' Mara said, very dry, 'is under the misapprehension I haven't considered it. I spared a thought for your postman, that's all.' So saying she pressed teacups on both of them and extended the milk jug as though in reconciliation before slipping away to Shirley's side.

'Explain that one to me,' said Jerry, watching them with interest. 'What exactly happened? Your letters were never very clear on it.'

'You're asking rather the wrong person, don't you think?'

'Possibly. But I know you, angel. Or I did.'

There was a clatter as Nan set her plate down on the stone base of their inglenook, and then the warmth of her, crimson-clad and smelling of apple blossom, as she wrapped her arms around him, leaning her head on his shoulder. 'Always,' she said. 'How could you wonder?'

'It's been a long time,' said Jerry as he touched his fingers lightly to the crown of her head. 'And letters don't always…I'm glad, I suppose I mean.'

'There are always visits,' said Nan to the buttons on his collar, her breath prickling the skin on his neck. 'Avonlea isn't so far.'

'Mm. I rather think your Mrs. Lynde might haunt you for that.'

'Only if you stayed at the schoolhouse,' said Nan, and there was laughter, rich and warm, in her voice. 'Come to that, she wouldn't need to. The board would have twenty fits this side of Sunday. But there's always Aunt Diana, and Green Gables, and…oh, any number of places.'

'I'll think on it,' said Jerry, and Nan bobbed her glossy brown head in appreciation.

'It's mine,' she said drowsily, 'and you've never seen it –all its secret places. I'd like you to know it.'

A sudden inrush of air brought the sharp cold scent of snow and the fresh pine smell of the wreath on the door, mixed with the earthy, wet scent of the walkway, long since trampled to mud, into the room. At first Jerry took for someone letting in the New Year, and then the holiday caught up with him. Christmas. The door had swung wide of its own volition then, Jem mustn't have locked it. But then there was Teddy Lovall, breathless and ruddy-cheeked, gasping semi-coherently as he stood on the braid rug, 'Doc..Doc…'

Dr. Blythe, who had resumed debating Christmas narratives from the sound of it, turned his head with the rapidity of a whipcord.

'Me, not you,' said Jem, wryly. 'You get dignified titles, Dad. What is it Teddy?' He said it nearly all in the same breath. From her place on the hearth-rug, Faith was beaming pride in him and motioning Teddy to help himself to food. She shouldn't have looked at all grown up, her hair static from the fire, eyes crinkled with amusement at something Poppy had said, and yet she did for all that.

'This is your Hatpin Murder?' said Faith, and to the others, perhaps unnecessarily at this point, 'we often talk the work over. Jem and Teddy say it helps.'

Dr Blythe was nodding, apparently as conversant in this idea as he was in the nuances of the synoptic Gospels.

That was all it took, and off Teddy went into the unfortunate case of Miss Tuppence Wentworth and the hatpin, about the swatch of tweed they had come across at the scene late this afternoon, not so much a recapitulation, Jerry thought, as a kind of outpouring of everything he had in his head on the subject.

'It's still wrong,' said Jem. 'I can't think _why_ , but it's still wrong.'

'Of course it's wrong,' said Nan, making several people, Jerry not least of them, jump.

'What do you mean of course?' Jem was indignant.

'Well, it's the hatpin, isn't it?' said Nan.

'Is it?' this from Faith, Jem and Teddy as three sets of eyes swivelled to meet Nan's brown ones.

'Of course. You keep talking about it as if the murderer was a woman.'

'Yes,' said Jem, 'because of –'

'Of the hatpin,' finished Nan. 'And that's what's wrong. It's not a woman.'

'Because of the hatpin?' Teddy's eyes had gone as wide as full moons.

'Look,' said Nan, in a voice that gave Jerry a sudden and sharp impression of her in a classroom full of recalcitrant Sloanes, 'Faith, you'll understand this. When was the last time you had cause to _use_ a hatpin?'

A long silence followed in which Jerry swore he could hear his sister's brain catching her friend up. It was probably only the mantle clock.

'Of course!'

'Of course _what_?' said Teddy and Jem for the rest of them.

'The hatpin. I haven't used one in ages.'

'No,' said Jem, 'Not since you cut your hair,' looking and sounding baffled.

'But Jem, that's the whole point, Prudence Wentworth had _short_ hair. You said so yourself. So –'

'So she wouldn't use a hatpin?' said Jem, making it into a question. There was another cognitive click, or perhaps only the clock, and he said with more conviction, 'She wouldn't have used a hatpin. We're meant to _think_ it was a woman.'

'Geometry,' said Nan dryly in Jerry's ear, 'makes an easier lesson plan.'

Jerry, revelling in her quickness, had made the mistake of swallowing a mouthful of cider, and now spluttered into a coughing fit. How had they all missed it? But of course, Jerry thought, reaching over his shoulder for a curl that had slipped its pinning, Nan still wore her hair long –still used hatpins then. Though he thought, as he wound the curl around his fingers, she'd have got there ahead of them in any case.

'You've missed your calling,' he said, lightly, and Nan shook her head. The curl he'd been holding came unwittingly free in the process leaving his fingers exposed and stranded.

'I had my share of unpleasantness when the war was on,' she said, tucking his mired hand into her slip of a one. 'I could just about write about it…maybe, bloodlessly…without the violence…but I wouldn't do Teddy's work for anything.'

Jerry considered this. He looked at her, the lighted-up flicker of her eyes as she sketched this nebulous future, and without a thought for Teddy, or the others, kissed her mouth, as if to absorb some of that lighted-up look.

'I'll come visit,' he said, moved by impulse. 'And in the meantime, angel, write something that matters.'


	6. Foxgloves in the Case

_Thanks ever to those of you reading and/or reviewing. I love hearing what you think, of course, but I'm quite as happy knowing you're reading -I'm still fairly surprised by the sheer number of you there seem to be reading along. In other news, one day I'll get the trick of changing character's names mid-story deftly. This is not that day. But I've done the best I can for you to get us where we need to go._

* * *

TThe inspector called in the middle of supper, which was to say, he hammered on the door with the requisite force to carry over the blizzard howling outside Larkrise and continued to knock until someone came to the door.

'Sorry,' said Faith on opening it to a whirl of white and letting Carlisle –and a healthy burst of snow –into the hall, 'we weren't sure it was a person at first. The elm out front is full of dead wood; Jem thought it might be a branch.'

She then proceeded, in the face of his protestations, to brush the snow from his shoulders, take his hat and unburden him of his coat.

'I was really coming to fetch Jem,' said the inspector, helpless.

'Clearly. But you won't be any good to the precinct if you catch pneumonia for your trouble. We're at supper. I suppose you bolted from yours. Join us?'

Not giving him the option to decline, she proceeded to draw up a chair at the little spindly-legged table, where Jem, Mara and Shirley were discussing Arthur Meighen's fall from grace.

'I thought,' said the inspector, joining them, 'pneumonia being caused by wet feet was one of those ideas that had gone out of fashion?'

'Nan swears by it still,' said Jem, taking the place setting Faith held and passing it down the table to Carlisle. 'She's the one that set us up on the right track by way of the hatpin case, by the by. What have you got for me this evening?'

'Oh, your guests won't want the details over a meal. I daresay you won't either,' with a nod to Faith. That occasioned laughter from the others. Jem sent the soup tureen the same way as the latest place setting and said, 'Faith makes our cases look quite tame. What was it they had you doing the other day?'

'Surgery,' said Faith mildly. 'We'll spare your inspector the details, I think.'

'Please,' said Carlisle, accepting of pepper for the soup.

Introductions were negotiated over helpings of sausage casserole, and that done talk of Ottawa and the persons act got them through supper. Silverware chinked lightly against plates, shadows danced across the walls and the wind howled so magnificently the windows and chimney rattled with it. Around the table, opinions darted like arrows. It was the kind of keen, spirited discussion that brought Swallowgate home to Faith with a vengeance, the ache of it tempered by the knowledge that such experiences were not localized to ivied walls with tower rooms, but could be ignited by the right combination of people and atmosphere. And if Jem and the inspector looked too much like killing one another over the issue of the Manitoba strike –which was anyways well over –Shirley was seated between them and more than capable of intervening.

'You were saying something about a body for me?' said Jem, pressing a teacup on Carlisle, the affair of the strike forgotten, as Faith attempted to clear plates unassisted by Mara to no very good result.

'Yes, drowned.'

'At this time of year?' Shirley said, incredulous. 'Faith, sit down. You won't win that battle.'

'No, I probably won't,' said Faith lightly. 'Ariel, if you're doing that, I'm getting the tea.'

Mara made a noise far back in her throat suggesting this point was up for debate. To the inspector she said reasonably, 'He might have thought to go skating. It's the time of year for it.' She then reached over his shoulder and whisked his plate onto the stack amassing on her arm.

'Not a bad thought,' said Carlisle, approving. 'One we hadn't thought of too. Are all your family amateur detectives, doctor?'

'Faith's the doctor,' said Jem.

'Hardly,' said Faith from the kitchen, where, having lost the battle of the table clearing, she had gone to make tea. Now she reappeared brandishing an overfull farmhouse teapot that dripped water from spout and lid, and offered in emendation, 'Not yet, at any rate.'

'Nan was always inventing mysteries back at Swallowgate,' said Mara, 'we were all in a fair way to learn how to parse them.'

Shirley nodded, turned a teaspoon between his fingers and said, 'It's also been Jem's pet subject of late.'

'Drowned where?' asked Jem, ignoring the others, who had anyway begun to laugh. Milk and sugar duly went their rounds, and somewhere in the proceedings appeared a lopsided Victoria sponge, generously oozing cream and jam. They took it with a healthy dose of forensic guesswork, because, Jem argued to Carlisle, it was much too difficult to take with them and eat as they walked, even on nights when a jaunt to the crime scene didn't involve a full-blown blizzard.

* * *

The scene was duly squinted at through the bluster and billowing of the snow, but it was too dark, and certainly much too cold, to make much headway.' Though we'll have the devil of a time pinning a dath stamp on him,' said Jem as he rubbed his hands feverishly together for warmth. 'See if we don't.' Carlisle's teeth were chattering, preventing much communication of the meaningful kind, but Jem took this for incredulity and said more expansively, 'The cold will have slowed everything down, won't it?'

It had too, for which reason the following morning found Jem in the process of sorting through the drowned man's stomach when Carlisle appeared in the icy little surgery, catching him unawares.

'Do me a favour,' said the inspector from the safety of the door. He had never, Jem had noticed, repeated his wish to witness an examination close at hand since Jem's installation at the station house back in the autumn. Either Teddy's squeamishness was catching, or once had been enough to satisfy the man's curiosity. Now Jem grinned a Cheshire cat's grin at him and said, 'I can't tell you when he died, as yet, but I can tell you he wasn't drowned.'

He then resumed sorting the man's stomach contents. Some kind of sandwhich paste, he thought, and bread and a fair quantity of alcohol. Someone was going to have to find out where it had come from, and he said so. Carlisle, seemingly disinterested in stomach contents, waived this detail away.

'Leave that for a minute,' he said now. 'Not the favour I'm after.'

Jem raised one red eyebrow, but rinsed his hands in the basin and complied, crossing the room, and drying them on a pocket-handkerchief as he went. Nearer the door the air smelled less of surgery, more of starched uniform and sterilized atmosphere. 'You've never got another one for me to puzzle over,' he said, joining Carlisle by a suitably pristine counter.

'No. Rather different actually. You see the children appear to be sharing measles round the house at the moment –'

'Shall I call in on them after this then, sir?'

'No, better not. Mac still sees my children as his express property in all things medical, retired or not. Let me get to the end of a thought, can you? No, it's like this; we have tickets for an evening out, but of course Judith's exhausted with catering to the little gremlins–we haven't a good patient among them, would you believe it – so I said I'd sit up with them tonight. One of us ought to have a chance at sleeping and all that.'

Jem nodded, grimacing sympathetically. 'I hear that helps.'

'You'll find out,' said the inspector with a laugh, 'give it time. We weren't expecting the ambush of measles, obviously, so never changed the tickets and I rather hoped you'd fill them for us.'

'When?' asked Jem, narrowing his eyes at Carlisle.

'This evening, naturally. Take your wife with you. Your brother and his wife too, there's four tickets there.'

It struck Jem as he blinked away his momentary confusion that he had lost the heartbeat of space allotted to him to set Carlisle straight about Shirley and Mara. No matter, he'd warn whichever of them was next to appear at Larkrise. In the meantime, it was gratifying to hear his own first impression verified by an outsider.

'Sir, if there's four tickets, hadn't you better give them to whoever was planning to go with you?'

'Just have,' said Carlisle easily. 'I kept meaning to get 'round to the asking and other things kept cropping up. And it's Geordie to you. Inspector and Sir are the people who rap Constable Benwick's knuckles when he submits his reports late, or tell Teddy well done on an especially good bit of detection.' Then, seeing Jem beginning to shake his head, 'It's only reasonable you know, seeing as it's fair play to make use of your first name.'

'Hm,' said Jem, unconvinced. 'You don't appear to have used Mac's.'

'No, well, that was a point of preference. I asked about his first name once and all he gave me was a crossword clue, cryptic as you like: _My whole life's effort revolves around Eve._ '

'Right,' said Jem. He could feel half his conscience slipping gently towards unscrambling the clue, in spite of the need to get on with the case. Luckily Carlisle –Geordie –had moved back to the tickets.

'I'll give them to you now, shall I?' he was saying. 'I'd hoped to be there, obviously, but if you have to be plunged into the world of Gilbert and Sullivan without a guide, there are worse places to start than _The Mikado_.'

Jem must have looked as dubious as he felt about the venture, because Carlisle –Geordie, he realised he must start thinking of him –duly clapped him on the back and said, 'Do you good to get out of the house. When was the last time that happened, anyway?'

'Well,' said Jem, trying unsuccessfully to dredge up a satisfactory answer, 'I couldn't really…'

'There you are then. Judith would be horrified, incidentally. You can let Faith know over dinner. Now, you were saying something about his not being drowned?'

'No,' said Jem.

At this juncture, a tea-bearing Teddy appeared, hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

'In you come,' said Geordie, motioning Teddy into the surgery. 'Jem's telling us how this man here didn't drown. Got a name for him?'

'Henderson,' said Teddy promptly. 'Robert Henderson. He owned some shop on the high street.'

'Ah good,' said Jem. 'Much better to have a name for him. Now, you see here,' he pressed down gingerly, fingers just under Robert's mouth, while both men looked on in trepidation. Water burbled up from Henderson's mouth like a fountain. 'Much too much water. Know anything about drowning?' Receiving negatives from the others over their mugs, Jem went on. 'Right, well it's fairly straightforward. Typically, the larynx closes up. I mean obviously you go on struggling, but essentially you asphyxiated because the lungs are sealed. No water gets in. That's a dry drowning. Is this making sense?' Seeing the others nod, 'Good. That's not what this is. Alternatively, the larynx partly shuts, opening just briefly as you fall unconscious. Water comes in, see? That's a wet drowning. It's also not what happened here.'

'Too much water,' said Teddy.

'Right. Much too much water. It rushed in as Robert here broke the water, or the ice, I should say. That's why, by the way, I can't give you a proper time of death. He was either dead as he hit the water, or just after. I can't do better than that, I'm afraid.'

'Because of the _larynx_?' asked Geordie, bemused.

'Yes. Try breathing in next time you drink tea.'

Choking noises from Teddy's quarter suggested he had taken this advice to heart, and Jem hit him between the shoulders.

'In other words, your wife was right about his not wanting to have been drowned,' Geordie said. It got increasingly easier, Jem realised, to think of the inspector as possessed of a first name, now he'd begun.

'She needed to be _right_ about that? It takes tremendous willpower, you know, drowning. The body fights back spectacularly.'

Teddy made faint noises of protest and Jem hid a smile behind his mug of tea. He made the mistake of catching the inspector's eye and saw he too was stifling humour.

'The Doc's family have got more taste for this sort of talk than you, Teddy. Whatever brought you into the station house in the first place? I've often meant to ask.'

'I thought it would be _neat_ work,' said poor Teddy, as both men dissolved in peals of laughter.

* * *

'You look like a sunrise,' said Jem, coming prematurely into the room, and finding Faith fussing with the clasp of a necklace. 'Here, let me do that.' In a heartbeat, he had crossed the room and taken the thing in his hands, and found himself caught between laughter and lamentation. It was a little slip of a thing, and old, a string of coppery beads that might have been amber or only aspiring to be. A boy's idea of a gift really, but he'd been so proud of it when he'd found it in behind the display cabinet in Carter Flagg's store.

'I ought to be able to do better than that now,' he said, deciding on levity. 'Remind me in time for your birthday, won't you, darling?'

'It wouldn't be quite the same though, would it?' said Faith, her hand curling protectively beads. 'You gave them to me…how long had we been courting?'

'Can't have been long,' said Jem, 'Our first shared Christmas, was it?'

'Mm. Not that we hadn't traded gifts before then.'

'No.' Jem had finished with the clasp stood for a minute gloating over the picture Faith made. He had expected resistance to the idea of an outing, had half-hoped she wouldn't stand the short notice and they could both retreat behind a barrage of well-worn excuses about coursework and readings, diagrams and revisions, but it hadn't happened that way. Faith had met the news with a look like a rainbow and then a triumphal whistle as she closed the medical text of the moment with a satisfying clunk. 'That's _that_ then,' she had said, radiant with enthusiasm.

'You haven't let me tell you what it is,' had dubiously said Jem, even as he felt his own misgivings falling away by the second. He'd gone to war for her –he'd go to the moon if he could and she asked it –he could surely run to an evening out, however unlikely the entertainment.

It wasn't like that now. Still true, of course, but now, as he took in the spectacle of her awash in rich red taffeta, smocked across the bodice, pleated at the skirt, and those old amber beads of years ago at her throat, he was glad –and really glad –she had brooked no argument over the excursion. Brightness became her. She wore it the way other women wore wraps; he touched a hand to her collarbone and could almost feel it on her, a hum like electricity, a murmur in the bone.

'Wine colours suit you,' he said, breath soft against her ears.

'So much so you're liable to take it off?' said Faith, turning to him and laughing, her eyes and her mouth both.

'We have time,' said Jem unconcernedly, 'and this is important.'

'Oh? How so?'

'A study I'm making for work purposes,' said Jem, solemnly. 'about heart rate and exertion and…you'd much better go along with it you know. It's very dull to explain.'

Faith's fingers had found the buttons to Jem's collar in turn and were now systematically undermining their function as buttons. She hummed lightly, the sound forward in her mouth, so that Jem caught the last of it as he kissed her lips. 'I was beginning to draw that conclusion myself,' she said now, with a kiss for his throat.

'Though I thought you were having this evening off?'

'Oh well,' leading her towards the bed, 'I suppose what the station house doesn't know won't hurt it.'

Another hum from Faith, this one prickling ticklishly near his ears as she dropped a kiss on his earlobe. 'Heartbeats, was it?' she said.

'Something like that…'

* * *

Evensong sat back off the road, half-submerged in darkness when Shirley knocked on the door, though someone had obviously come by to light the lamp over the door, and a light in the sitting room window suggested at least people were home. It seemed an unnaturally long interval between the knocking and the door swinging reluctantly open, half-hindered by the gale that was blowing through the city. At least, thought Shirley, the snow had settled.

Whatever he'd anticipated, he hadn't expected Mara at the door in watered blue silk that looked as if she'd snatched a piece of the sky for the making of it, her hair coiled like a crown around her head, a strand of old-world pearls warm and luminescent at her throat. It struck him forcibly that he had never seen her dressed for an occasion before, that there had never been one to warrant it on this scale, and the sight of it now made his breath catch painfully in his throat.

'All right?' said Mara.

'They didn't give us much warning, did they?'

'It didn't sound as if they'd had much themselves.'

'Not quite what I meant,' said Shirley. Then, with difficulty, 'You'll be cold, Ariel.'

'Hardly.'

Shirley touched a hand lightly to her arms meaning to do no more than register the veracity of this: they were bare and the sleeves of her gown short. That he folded her into his arms thereafter was more instinct than conscious thought. The same was true, he thought, as he bent to kiss her, of the way she rose up onto the balls of her feet for ease of returning the gesture –it was almost a dancer's trick, but then this was a dance they had tread well. He caught the merest whisper of her perfume, iris and orange blossom, and it was only what she wore for every occasion that warranted polish, Shirley knew, but it sent him reeling backwards even so into memories dizzying in their fervour. It wasn't only the memory of it. Shirley was acutely aware of the quickening of Mara's breath as she fitted herself to him, of her hands darting back against the card table for ballast as though to steady herself or ground them both. The gesture sent perhaps a handful of letters cascading to the floor, a little thing but enough to reawaken her to the occasion at hand.

With an effort Mara's hands had found their way to his chest and pushed gently. 'Not now,' she said, almost breathless, and that was enough. In a moment Shirley had let her go and she was back to balancing on the soles of her feet, though her breath still came fast and the ghost of his arms around her lingered. It was also the first real negative that had come between them, and it rippled through the air like a spear of lightening.

'Later,' she said, and folded her arms tight across her stomach, fingers beating a tattoo against her elbows in strategic line of defence. She could still hear her heart in her ears, rapid and hard-beating like a bodhran: it would be the easiest thing in the world to relent, to settle back into Shirley's arms and resume where they'd left off, let things fall how they would.

'We'll be late to the others,' Mara said by way of explanation, apparently to the cupboard she had half-vanished into in search of a coat. The explanation settled him though, she felt it in the way he lifted the coat from her arms and held the sleeves out for her, saying as he did so, 'You're looking forward to this, aren't you?'

'Something like that,' Mara said. 'Evenings out weren't something we could run to before.'

'Do you know,' as he handing her her gloves from the hall table, 'I never thought.'

'No, well. Nor had I until Faith raised the idea.'

They lingered on the doorstep while she took trouble over the lock, the air heavy with the smell of oncoming snow and the cedars that sheltered the house.

'I'll hold you to later, shall I?' said Shirley, offering her his arm.

'By all means.'

* * *

In the event they were ahead of Jem and Faith, and stood watching for them outside the theatre, wind creeping up sleeves and down collars wherever it could find an opening. It was the most natural thing in the world to draw together for warmth, Mara's head nestled against the hollow of Shirley's chest. The moon was high and full, illuminating the courtyard and its walkway like a chaste, silver sun. Through the door drifted buzz of so many people's chatter, the bright chime of glasses against one another and a variegation of scents that ran from the rich warmth of spiced cider to the overwhelming sweetness of fondant. A band in the lobby had giddily struck up _Blue Room_ as if anxious to reassure patrons it was attuned to the music of the hour if no one else was, and the bright brass spackled the air like fine-spun gold. It was easy to pick Jem and Faith out from the approaching theatre-goers. Faith's hat was jauntily askew and Jem's hair blazed like an unruly beacon under the derby he had crammed onto his head seemingly at the last moment. Apparently discerning the sound of the brass even at a distance, Jem pulled Faith into an unlikely polka, so that they all but collided with their friends when finally they drew abreast of them.

'We thought you'd be later,' said Faith needlessly, breathlessly, as she steadied herself, slipping her arm free of Jem's and coming to meet them.

'Call it force of habit,' said Mara, with a smile for them. 'I'm more often the other side of the wings when it's something like this. It wouldn't do to be late then.'

'Oh good,' said Jem, falling back with Shirley to shepherd the women through the theatre door and into the warm glow of the foyer, 'you'll know all about this then. I can't help feeling one of us ought to.'

'I'd hardly say that,' said Mara.

* * *

It was a surreal first hour. Geordie's parting injunction had been to expect the absurd, but somehow that hadn't adequately taken account of the mixture of fantastic and the macabre that was _The Mikado_. Even had the show not insisted on transporting them to a thinly veiled Britain masquerading as a fictive Japan, it would have been bizarre. All told, Jem thought they were getting a pretty good idea of what it must have felt like for Alice falling down that rabbit hole. Between patter songs and witticisms, he recalled the inspector's airy aside that really, they ought to have gone with someone who knew the style, and he wondered if had that been the case it would have made more sense. It could hardly make _less_ , he supposed. Gently his mind drifted from the High Executioner's song, to the war and the things he had done, and on to Robert Henderson, who hadn't been drowned, before returning to the spectacle of the production. And yet for all that, it wasn't a bad first hour either. Jem couldn't remember the last time he and Faith had had cause to simply stop like this and catch their breath, all talk of textbooks, essays and casework forgotten. He risked a look across at Shirley and Mara, near hands folded together, and the same could likely be said of them.

The interval came and went in a cheerful hubbub of people stepping across latticed ankles and jostling for drinks, before retreating again to their seats. At some point, Jem thought as the curtain came up, someone must have made the mistake of believing the production couldn't prove stranger, because the story rose to the challenge. It was the only explanation. Somewhere after the interval, they were ambushed by the jaunty curiosity that was _There is beauty in the barrel of the blast_ …encapsulating as nothing else had, as yet, the emotional whiplash the audience was liable to be subjected to as the music tacked from raptures to despair and back again.

'Odd sentiment, wasn't it?' said Jem as he turned to Faith afterwards. ' _There is beauty in the barrel of the blast_ and all that.'

'Do you think so? I was just thinking that of all the stuff we'd heard tonight that made the most sense. All through the war I'd thought…well not that exactly, but something like it. In spite of the mud and the violence and the horror of it, there was still beauty to be had, even a richness, in life. To harrow hell and come out the other side –well Christ did it, didn't He, and it's odd, but not even in a church have I felt nearer to God.'

'You've kept your wonderment in it,' said Jem, awe-struck. 'Through all that –it's still a perpetual miracle to you.'

'Always. Isn't it like that for you?' asked Faith. They had lost track of the others in the crush of people at the exit, and she scanned the crowd for them now, Mara's felt hat and Shirley's tall, tanned figure. The lobby band had swapped _Blue Room_ for the lilt of _Let Me Call You Sweetheart,_ which after two and a half hours of light operetta, was not a little disorienting. Faith was brought back by Jem's quiet declaration, 'I need it to make _sense_ , darling. That's not the same thing. Not just our dead, but Faith…I did the thing I swore I wouldn't do. All those men I killed… And now it's all over and I'm meant to live with it and… I can't just go back to setting limbs and sewing sutures as if it's all some seamless puzzle, do you see?'

'I see.'

The others emerged then from the fringe of the courtyard, where they had stood waiting, and Jem was off whistling again,

 _If that be so sing derry-down-derry,  
_ _It's evident very our tastes are one_ …

'Your cue, I think,' said Faith to Mara with a smile.

'Hm?'

'It's the bit about merrily marrying next, isn't it?' asked Faith of Jem, surprised the words had stuck so well to say they sounded like nursery nonsense.

'That's right,' said Jem, and he swapped whistling for singing, albeit rather flatly and in the wrong key.

 _Nor tardily tarry 'til day is done…_

'Not on your life,' said Mara, laughter warm in her voice.

'I can't imagine Uncle Jo would mind so much,' said Jem, 'and Aunty Phil would think it a grand idea.'

'What, and cheat Susan of her occasion?' Mara shook her head. 'I haven't your nerve.'

* * *

Jem was back to whistling the following morning, so that Geordie, looking far better rested than Jem had anticipated after a night ministering to half-a-dozen measle-ridden children, observed as he leaned against the counter, 'That's rather a good one, isn't it? Often gets cut –glad they let you hear it.'

'Hm?' said Jem. He was making a critical inspection of Robert Henderson's heart and was pulled back from the work reluctantly. Geordie, ever helpful, took up the melody, so that Teddy, appearing suddenly said, 'Oh not you as well. Doc's been going 'round the same two bars since I don't know when. Like a bloody trapped moth, or something. Sorry,' this last as an afterthought.

The swearing though got Jem's attention where Geordie hadn't quite, and he turned to find the sergeant as sleep-deprived as he'd expected his colleague to be.

'All right, are you, Teddy?'

'Tell you about it later,' said Teddy. 'Supposed to give you these. Found them in a case of Henderson's things. No one knows what they are.'

'I'll look,' said Jem, 'and while I look, you're going to tell the inspector there why you look like a thundercloud on the verge of bursting. It's never my earworms at the root of it.'

There was a noise of decided annoyance from Teddy, and he retreated to the surgery door, into which he appeared to be attempting to retreat. But the surgery had electrical light if Larkrise hadn't, and there were no cosy shadows to take refuge in.

'I could make it an order,' Geordie offered.

'Yes,' said Jem. 'Do. Foxglove, incidentally.'

'Sorry?' as two policemen directed confused looks his way.

'Foxglove,' said Jem, waving the tablets their direction. ' _Digitalis_. Very good for the heart. Now Teddy, you were explaining about looking like thunder?'

'Nothing really,' said Teddy to the floor against which he was scuffing his shoes. 'They're fed up with the erratic hours, is all.'

'Who are?' asked Jem, turning away from the Foxglove and Henderson's heart to give Teddy his full attention. Geordie was doing it too, green eyes knit together in disquiet. They looked like stony green marbles.

'Only the boarding house,' Teddy tried to say easily, but he hunched his shoulders on the last word or two. He managed a shrug to better effect and said, 'you know what they're like.'

Geordie made the kind of indignant noise back in his throat that spoke to first-hand experience of boarding houses and their take on odd hours. Jem was inclined to echo him, having had a healthy dose of experience himself in another life. Now hardly seemed the time to become an avenging fury though.

'Teddy,' said Jem, folding his arms, 'are they all right about you staying on?'

'Not really, no. But I'm looking into it, Doc, it's all right.'

'It is _not_ all right,' said Geordie with severity, making Jem and Teddy jump. 'Let me think, we could put Toby and Simon in together of course, and –'

'No, no,' said Jem. 'Not unless Teddy's had measles.' Geordie went as far as to open his mouth in contradiction, but Jem went on before he could say more. 'Better not move them all around if they're ill, sir. Geordie. Anyway, it will rankle afterwards. I ought to know –we were all shunted about the house when Aunt Mary Maria was staying. Haven't told you that story? No matter. The point is, Teddy, you'd be much better coming back to Larkrise. There's a spare room we can put you up in quite easily.'

'But hadn't you better ask –' began Geordie.

'If it comes to that, wouldn't _your_ wife have an opinion? Anyway, we aren't under an attack of measles. There aren't even children to contend with.'

'Yes, but Doc,' said Teddy feebly, 'I really feel you'd better ask –'

'Give me some credit, the pair of you,' said Jem. 'The offense Faith is less likely to forgive is casting you into outer darkness, Teddy. I guarantee it. We'll sort it out over dinner, shall we?'

'Right,' said Teddy. He looked halfway between resigned and relieved. Jem couldn't blame him –he'd have been the same himself. 'You were explaining something about Foxgloves, Doc? Could we get back to that?'

'Ah, yes, _Digitalis_ and Robert Henderson's heart…'

* * *

After the Foxglove revelation -Teddy had forgotten the other, vaguely Latin name already - Inspector Carlisle insisted on corralling the Doc into the interview room, the better to observe the people under questioning –this in spite of his seeming unconvinced they were even looking at murder.

'He had a bad heart, Geordie,' he said to the inspector, leaving Teddy to puzzle out when they had got to Christian names without his realising, 'anything might have done it in.'

'If he didn't take those pill-thingummies, you mean?'

' _Digitalis_ , yes,' said the Doc, and that was the point at which he'd been strong-armed into the interview room, a procedure sufficiently irregular to make Teddy's shoulders twitch in nervousness, least someone superior to the Inspector drop in unannounced. Meanwhile, the lad they were trying to quiz was being decidedly unhelpful.

'Well I don't _know_ ,' he said now, for what must have been the dozenth time. 'He was off all evening, wasn't he?'

'Off how?' asked the Doc from the recesses of the room, startling Teddy, never mind the recalcitrant youth opposite him. 'He wouldn't have mentioned anything, er – _yellow_ by chance, would he?'

The boy goggled at him. 'How did you know? All he said all night. His drink wasn't yellow enough, he kept saying. I just thought he was a bit tight.' He stopped, abashed. Jem waived a hand, in unconcern. To the inspector he said, 'I think that's lots to be going on with, don't you, Sir?'

They were only on Christian names went not halfway through an investigation, then, thought Teddy. Or perhaps the form of the thing was for the boy's sake. In any event the inspector was nodding, and Teddy rose to hold the door open for their interviewee. He went, and alone the inspector cut his eyes at the Doc and said, 'Yellow? Forgive the asking, but that furthers us _how_ , exactly?'

'Ah, yes,' said Jem. 'We now know he hadn't taken his pills, do you see? Which he would have done, left to his own devices because your chap there,' nodding in the direction of their retreating guest, 'has just finished telling us he took them religiously.'

'Yes,' Carlisle said, 'but I don't see how that –'

'I was coming to that,' said the Doc. 'Nothing was yellow enough, he said. Now that's important because _Digitalis_ can do that sometimes. Make things look yellow. Only they _weren't_ –or at least were insufficiently yellow –'

'So he wasn't taking the _Digitalis_ ,' said the inspector nodding. 'Murder after all then?'

'You'll have a fine time proving it,' said the Doc, 'but that's my bet, if you want it.'

The afternoon stretched long. All back round the houses they went, the Doc very firmly with them. It went on so long that Teddy began to hope they'd forgotten the morning and he'd be off the hook about imposing on the Doc and his family. No luck. They came away as the sun was brushing the crowns of the trees and Carlisle said, 'Right, better get your things, then, Teddy. Lead the way.'

Teddy duly did and some time later they trouped up the walk to Larkrise, Teddy with his satchel slung over his shoulder, Jem and the inspector negotiating his much-abused trunk between them. He still didn't like it –much –but he felt he couldn't dodge his way out of the situation without an alternative, and Teddy was out of alternatives. Benwick had donated him a corner of his room the other evening, and it had done in a pinch, but between cigarettes and the imperfect chimney it had been so thick with smoke that Teddy hadn't been able to sleep for coughing. And after all that stuff the Doc had said earlier about hearts and breathing –well, Teddy didn't understand half of it, but he didn't fancy the corner of Benwick's room again any time soon. And short of that –well he _could_ explain about his mother, and the boys, but there didn't seem much point. Already he was impinging on the Doc's goodwill –Mrs Blythe's too, probably –without landing them with the uninspired saga that was his history.

They had set the trunk down on the stoop while the Doc shouldered the front door open, sending its knocker rattling in the wind and snow over the threshold. 'It sticks,' Doc said needlessly, 'in the winter.'

'Here let me get it,' from somewhere in the hall and then there was Mrs Blythe in the hallway, rosy-cheeked, haloed in lamplight, and more than mildly baffled to see them. She took in the luggage and said, eyebrows raised, 'Who's coming to stay then?'

'Sorry,' said the Doc, while Teddy braced himself against an argument, 'perils of having no phone. Teddy's boarding house are less than sympathetic about the hours he keeps to see the city's in good order. Slight problem that. I sort of volunteered us, seeing as –'

'We're in and out at weird hours more often than not?' The Doc grinned at her. Teddy, who had been preparing to flinch, blinked in confusion. To Teddy, he said only, 'Told you so.' It made Teddy want to laugh, one part amusement to three parts giddy relief. Mrs Blythe had got the trunk by a handle and notwithstanding the others' protests had lugged it into the hall. She looked surprised, Teddy thought, as if somehow his worldly possessions shouldn't have fit so naturally into one box, and comfortably at that. There was still a good deal of space, less his imperfect packing, more the need to bolt his mother and Charlie Slater who'd taken up residence –not the boys so much. He still felt a bit sick over that. Money every month wasn't quite the same, which reminded him, as he dusted snow off his shoes, knees and generally everywhere courtesy of the weather, that he would have to pass the new address on to them. _Larkrise_. It even _sounded_ better than the boarding house had on paper.

Then Mrs Blythe had prised his satchel and coat from him and was generally darting about in frenetic fashion. He must have thanked her, whether for the coat, or his board, or the fact that somewhere in the whirlwind dinner had been mentioned Teddy couldn't remember. But she stopped, confusedly mid-whirlwind, and said, 'No, no Mrs Blythe is Jem's mother. I'm Faith. And you're home.'

 _Home_ thought Teddy, not arguing as he sank into a lionshead chair. It had an almost mythic ring to it, the word you reached for when no other would quite do for a place. He thought he'd be a while fitting Mrs Blythe's Christian name into his mouth, but _Home_ … The fire was blazing noisily, the table was –admittedly haphazardly –set, and the air redolent of hot bread and butternut squash soup. Someone had laced it with pepper, Teddy thought, as his feet began to thaw. There was laughter around him, he felt lighter than he had in weeks, and he was, after all, home.


	7. Mallo I would Rather Be

_As ever thank you for reading and/or reviewing. My fellow crime fiction devotees will have noticed this chapter title isn't a reference to anything besides Turn of the Screw, which I'm not sure counts. But I'm doing something slightly different with Nan and Jerry, so thought I wouldn't try and fit them into that mould. You might like to know, though, that this is in our at-home parlance, the 'Have His Carcass' chapter. If you've read your Sayers -and if we've done this right - you'll understand why._

* * *

I'm so sorry to ask…' said Faith over the phone, and sitting at the schoolhouse kitchen table, Nan's stomach lurched. For a start, Faith sounded apologetic, meaning she'd thought through whatever petition she was going to make, and the odds were against it being _Please would you ask Susan to do up a batch of her gingerbread the next time we come down to visit_. It was enough to make her miss the unthinking Faith of the Good Conduct Days –or the war, come to that, when in a panic Faith had sprung news of Jerry being shot on the lot of them over breakfast. But at least Nan had _known_. Worse, Faith was on the telephone, which meant, Nan knew, that she'd taken the one at Evensong house hostage, and _that_ meant whatever-it-was was urgent.

'Tell me again,' said Nan, realising she had missed whatever the request was. She sounded ill even to her own ears. She felt worse; hot, cold and prickly with nerves.

'Would you come up and visit? I wouldn't aske but –'

'You're asking for Jerry, aren't you?'

'Well of course we want to see you too, Catkin –'

'I was taking that as read. You're not asking on your account, are you?'

'No,' said Faith. Then, as though for reassurance, 'No. What gave it away?'

'You were walking on eggshells,' said Nan, twisting the telephone cord between her fingers, so that the line screeched protest. 'I can't remember the last time you did that. Una maybe, but you…and anyway, I was there over Christmas, and something was off about him then, only I couldn't place it. As if he'd not slept in weeks or something but –worse, somehow. What was it Ariel used to say, 'I can see what's in front of my nose'?'

'And a good deal that isn't,' said Faith, and laughed shakily. 'The pair of you. You'll come up then?'

'Across, you mean,' said Nan, making them both laugh in good earnest this time.

'Geography was it, you were marking, when I called?'

'Latin Fifth Declension, since you ask. When do you want me?'

'Whenever you can get here,' said Faith. She was back to sounding apologetic. 'I know it will be awkward for you. I really wouldn't ask except…'

'Faith,' with teacherly severity, 'I'm coming. I don't know how yet, but I'll wrangle it. It will give me an excuse to drop into _The Chronicle_ anyway, see how Di's getting on with them.'

'Don't you dare. They'll never let you leave, with your gift for writing. The police beat, probably, in light of your obvious fluency in the subject. It was a man, by the way, who did for Miss Wentworth of the Hatpin.'

'Was it? I told you so. And don't tempt me. I'm having one of those mornings where just about anything looks more appealing than a mountain of marking.'

Faith groaned sympathy, reiterating her thanks before ringing off.

In the shelter of the Evensong telephone nook, she pressed her fingers to her temple and drew a breath out through her mouth, counting the beats of it. _One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five._

'There, _a charaid,_ ' said Mara, whispering out of the woodwork and dropping a kiss on the crown of Faith's head. 'It will pass. Catkin will visit and it will come out fine, you watch.'

'Keep saying that,' said Faith through her fingers, 'and I might start to believe you.'

* * *

It had begun with the bagpipes, which all told, was understandable. The fact that the girls who pinned hopes had once chartered the progress of the high street piper as he serenaded passers-by said nothing overly encouraging about the playing. He hadn't even started especially early that morning by Shirley's reckoning; if anything, it was _later_ than usual, and under normal circumstances Jerry would have missed it. But they were still recovering from the breakneck pace of the holiday with its familial obligations, services and evening festivities, and the prospect of the library had been altogether too daunting for all but Carl, who claimed an appointment with a rare book on exotic beetles. It was understandable then that Jerry should say in horrified tones, ' _What_ is going on out there?'

What wasn't usual was that Jerry should drop a piece of Mrs Hugh Alexander's Dresden Sprayflowers over it.

'He is rather murdering _Haar on Skye_ , isn't he?' Shirley had said, handing Jerry a napkin to collect the china shards into, thinking to spare his fingers. 'He's meant to snap the beat in a moment, see if he does.'

The piper didn't, but that hardly warranted Jerry's observation, 'They're screaming.'

They had abandoned the breakfast room by then, as much to escape the noise that was striving to be _Haar on Skye_ as for the sake of the Dresden Sprayflowers. There was no corner of the house the sound didn't find out though, and in the little rose-papered parlour, awash in sun courtesy of the east-facing windows, Shirley looked properly at Jerry and reached instinctively for a blanket. He had seen that look before, and then it had been on young men landing their first airplane, teeth chattering as much with shock as residual altitude cold. Seeing it on Jerry in the rose-spattered parlour was all wrong. It gave him that lurching, foot-in-water sensation he had had the first time he had taken an aeroplane flying. He wished violently for Jem, remembered he was still embroiled in all things Henderson-and-Foxglove case related, and considered tea, before recalling the fate of the Dresden Sprayflowers and wondered if the boarding house ran to such incivilities as mugs. Preferably the thick, pottery kind.

'Sleep badly?' he asked lightly as he manoeuvred them out of the room.

'Guessing, are you?'

'Chalk it up to shared experience,' said Shirley. He paused on the landing to eye the telephone, but of course Larkrise wasn't on the exchange. Anyway, the odds were on all the inhabitants being out. _The Haar on Skye_ was still perishing by inches under the windowsill and Jerry had begun to go a sort of grey colour. _Tea with sugar,_ thought Shirley, _lots_. Having thought it, he stood hovering on the landing trying to conjure surreptitious ways of fetching it. Drat Carl and his preoccupation with catalogues of exotic beetles, or whatever the insect of the hour was. If he were here it would all be simpler.

In the end, he made up tea on the gas ring in Jerry's room, though the water took an age to boil, and there was, of course, no sugar.

'No reason to keep it in,' said Jerry when Shirley asked, an answer that at first earned him a raised eyebrow. It wasn't until Shirley stirred the tea to readiness that it dawned on him that of course Jerry deemed tea made out of a pot on a gas ring not nearly good enough for Nan's visits. Much better the rose-papered parlour or one of the tea rooms in town.

'Might have some in,' said Shirley, who had never in his life taken sugar with his tea, and set out, ostensibly in search of it. On the landing again he rang for Evensong, because Mondays were off-days for Mara, and she would be in if the others weren't.

'Do me a favour, Ariel?' She had sounded in the middle of about six things at once when she'd answered, but he must have sounded anxious because she let them go without a murmur. 'Of course,' all she said in answer, the briskness of it throwing Shirley backwards suddenly into 1916 and the war-days when they had first known one another and everything had been urgent.

'Fetch Faith, would you? Or Jem if you can't get her.'

'Yes, all right.'

Anyone else, Shirley reflected, might have hovered on the line wanting answers. Nan certainly would have done, mother too. Mara had simply severed the connection, and presumably bolted. It wouldn't be long then.

* * *

It wasn't. They arrived, both women on the doorstep breathless from exertion, Mara's skirt folded still into her left hand where she had lifted it to run.

'What's happened?' Faith asked, slipping sideways past Shirley in the narrowness of the porte-cochere entrance. There weren't words to sufficiently explain what the trouble was, and by then Shirley had become preoccupied with the bagpipes himself, still keening, but _Haar on Skye_ replaced now by a giddy rendition of _Lillibulero_. That being the case he negotiated the stair, Faith at his heels.

Jerry sat much as Shirley had left him when he had gone for the door; blanket slipped off his right shoulder and the mug of sweet tea cradled in his hands. It had cooled, steam having ceased long since to rise from the top. Faith knelt in front of her brother, her eyes narrowed, one hand lightly taking stock of half-a-dozen things at once, glancing off Jerry's wrist, the back of his neck, darting under his eyes.

'All right?' she said, voice soft. There was insufficient space in the little fist-storey room. Faith rocked back on her heels and the others slipped noiseless from the room.

Later as they stood in the hallway, crowded between an excess of wicker furniture and the inexpertly placed telephone nook, Faith sad, 'How long has this gone on?'

'I have no idea,' said Shirley. He was wedged against the telephone table, the edge of it cutting sharply into his lower back. 'I don't think he sleeps especially well, but I couldn't elaborate for you. Carl could, maybe, if you were to find him.'

'With the best will in the world,' said Faith 'you never thought to bring that up before?'

'Faith,' with patience, 'the odd thing would be if he _hadn't_ slept badly.'

She almost flinched and Shirley found himself in the rare position of wishing he could retract the words. Then Faith set her shoulders and offered him half a smile. 'Of course,' she said. 'I didn't think.'

Shirley waved a hand in dismissal. The air was thick with competing scents of the laundry then in progress and tea. Presently a round-faced woman appeared at the foot of the stairs with information that she had heard the guests come in and there was a tray ready in the parlour if they wanted it. The little party trooped dutifully downstairs singing their thanks, but no one had much energy for the civilities of tea on Dresden Sprayflowers. After a respectable interval had passed by the clock, Mara rose, and with a kiss for Shirley's cheek, took Faith's arm in hers and led her towards the door. 'There, _a leannan_ ,' she said as they went, voice gentle, 'Come back to the house. You'll be wanting to talk to people, and we've a phone there, if you haven't.'

Which was how Faith had come to ring Nan, late in the morning, a sheet before her full of permutations she had thought up and rejected with which to petition her friend. She hadn't banked on Nan's uncanny intuition. _Why_ she hadn't, in light of her having divined the means of Miss Wentworth's death when no one assigned to it could, was now beyond Faith. She chalked it up to having spent the early part of the morning looking at her brother as a patient rather than a relative and made a mental note to ask Dr Blythe how he did it next time they had cause to be in the same room and a spare moment between them. If she had her way, she was never repeating the episode.

* * *

And then Nan was in Kingsport talking Sloanes, Pyes, the recalcitrance thereof and bearing a hamper made up with love from Milly Keith.

'She didn't think we'd want to cook,' all Nan said by way of explanation, as she consigned it to Jem's care. To his raised eyebrow as he slung the basket bulkily under his arm, 'There were _three_ of them until Uncle Davy and I talked her down.'

It was almost normal. It was snowing gently, turning the station improbably into a _boule à neige_ ; fat little snowflakes melting against Nan's hat and dying the yellow felt flowers there an inca-berry orange. Faith rather thought they were aspiring to be marigolds. Overhead a cardinal was competing with the train whistle as it left the station. They turned onto the road, where the air was cold, clear and sharply flavoured with hemlock and spruce, and if Faith closed her eyes they might almost be bound for Swallowgate after a holiday away, except that those returns had never left a cat to claw out the inside of her stomach, not even when the war was at its worst. When Jem had been missing, maybe. But she hadn't been in Kingsport then. She drank deeply of the scent of the conifers and made-believe a half minute longer.

'Thank you for this,' said Faith, threading her arm through Nan's and never meaning the hamper.

'Hardly a chore,' said Nan.

'I'm afraid I'll have to leave you –I've a class shortly.'

'You realise the absurdity, don't you?' said Nan, smiling in spite of everything. 'You apologising to me for not playing gooseberry? In another life, you were always bolting to avoid that scenario.'

'No,' said Faith, 'it was the three hours on whether the Socratic method could or couldn't be applied to Ecclesiastes I couldn't do. Anyway, you hardly needed chaperoning. Rosemary used to say that once you and Jerry got your teeth into an argument it was a safe guarantee –Presbyterians not being allowed to bet, you understand –that you'd be exactly where she left you three hours later and only halfway into the argument.'

'We _don't_ argue,' said Nan, occasioning comfortable amusement for Jem and Faith.

* * *

To begin with it was, if not a charmed visit, then a sweet one. Term was fully launched by then, the lectures and classes underway, and it was an easy thing to weave between people as their time came spare, here catching up with Di, breathless with bossing reporters to give her deadlines, fingers black and the chemical smell of dyes and inks, mixed with laundry lye, on her clothes, there stealing an evening ramble with Jerry, or pulling Mara away from Evensong for a meal out –much to the distress of one Pilgrim, who had defected with her to the new house.

'Do you know,' she had said when Nan laughed over it, 'that cat followed me to Halifax when I went home? I left him with Naomi and the others thinking to come back for him –'

'You mean hoping he'd settle with other people?'

'Lucky guess, was that, _a charaid_? He turned up on the Keracher doorstep not a week afterwards –confident in the knowing that last thing we needed to take up cushions was a cat.'

Pilgrim chose this juncture to walk across Mara's knees and settle in her lap, whence he made a cushion of himself and commenced thrumming like a motor-car, and all the while kneading and pawing at her skirt as his ancestors had no doubt done to the veldt before him.

Once, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Mara's room at Evensong, Nan had worked up the nerve to ask, 'Why _don't_ you and Shirley do what Jem and Faith have done and set up house properly? No one would argue the point.'

'It isn't that,' said Mara, turning a what Nan couldn't help but recognise as grandmother Blythe's ring –the blue and gold of it – between her fingers as she said it. 'It's not even that Susan wants an excuse for an occasion, though she does and I don't mind giving her one. It's more…when the war was on, Catkin, anything might have happened. We never knew what was coming with the papers, with the post, who would be on the doorstep next with news of death and destruction. And I thought –I needed –to be able to say –If anything had happened to Shirley, I had needed to be able to say that this much had been mine. That I had counted, if not to you and yours then to him. To hold onto _something_ and say 'We were sweethearts –engaged, married, however briefly.' But it never came to that, and I can stand to wait now.' For all that, Nan thought Mara still looked terrified, as if in talking about it the war would creep back up on them and undo the efforts of the last eighteen months to rebuild the world.

* * *

They were taking tea at the boarding house when the bells struck. It startled Nan as much as it did Jerry, which was why in the beginning she hadn't thought anything of it. It wasn't the usual peel, treble-Kent-bob or whatever the wedding chime was, but slow, sonorous, like canon-fire. _One, two, three_ , Nan counted them, the echo rattling through the windowpanes.

'Good God,' said Mara, startling herself, 'a child. Please heaven not one of Jem's cases.'

'Forgive the frivolous question, Ariel,' said Shirley, 'but –how can you tell?'

In the brief silence that fell as the bell came to a stop, Mara blinked at them confusedly. 'You're never telling me the Glen doesn't do this.'

'We are,' said Nan and Shirley in unlikely unison, as they bell began again. Jerry grimaced, as if the sound was causing him acute pain.

'All right?' said Nan, stupidly, turning to him and unable to think of anything else.

'They've never done that before,' said Shirley for all of them. Mara was still unbelieving.

'But they must have,' she said, pouring out tea, unfazed. 'They're ringing the nine tailors'

'The nine _what_?' from the two confused Inglesideans, while Jerry pressed his fingers to his ears as if to stem some of the clangour. Instinctively Nan set down her teacup and threaded an arm through the crook of his elbow, trying to lay her head on his shoulder. His upraised hands made it difficult.

'You must have heard them, Catkin…no, thinking on it, you wouldn't have done. They stopped during the war. They had to. If they'd tolled out the life of all their dead we'd never have slept for the sound of it.'

As abruptly as it had started, the sound stopped.

'Eight,' murmured Mara, 'so out of swaddling, then.'

'Tell me there's a pattern to your knowing this, won't you?' said Shirley.

Nan didn't stay the explanation. Jerry's skin under her hand had chilled and pebbled with gooseflesh, notwithstanding the combination of Darjeeling tea and Mrs. Hugh Alexander's overzealous radiators. Faith might be the aspiring doctor, but Nan thought she knew enough not to like the colour he had turned. _Curds and whey_ she thought, with a mind for Norman Douglas. Apparently, it was a trait shared between anxious Merediths.

'Come on,' she said, leading Jerry gently by the elbow, 'woods are calling.'

* * *

In the hall, with the wind whistling through the imperfect single-glazing, Nan reclaimed her coat and then bundled Jerry into his, his fingers proving either too cold or too clumsy to negotiate the buttons.

'Mara's right, you know,' said Jerry as they walked, 'they did used to do that before –it would have been before you started. Jem and I could never work out the reason. Sort of makes your skin prickle to think they're claiming the dead, doesn't it?'

'Worse than death notices?' asked Nan. 'I still can't read them now, you know. I rely on Susan and Aunt Milly to keep me abreast of what's happened to who. It's probably terribly selfish.'

'It sounds decidedly reasonable,' said Jerry, and they lapsed into silence, their breath rising like mist before them.

It wasn't until they had walked well into the heart of the woods, the trees gnarled and twisted close together with age, that Nan got up the nerve to say, 'That's all it was? About the bells?' Getting no answer, she rushed on impulsively, 'Only –you never used to be superstitious. That was all me.'

'That was years ago, angel.' Perhaps it was the wind, or the cold, or perhaps it was nothing at all, but it seemed to Nan that notwithstanding the old endearment, _something_ put a sting like a nettle's into the words. And the worst of it was, she had no docket equivalent because in bygone years Jerry's stings, for all their debating, had landed on other people's shoulders. In a rational mood, she thought abstractedly, she'd suppose he hadn't meant it. For the time being that didn't lessen the bite of it.

'I suppose so,' she said, sitting down suddenly on a stump. It was half-mired in snow, and it swelled around her, damping her coat and sending a chill creeping into her blood.

'You aren't exactly as I left you either,' said Jerry, sitting down at her feet.

'No,' said Nan, throat tight. But at least the awful nettle sharpness had gone out of him. 'Jerry –lots has happened since then. Ever so much.'

'Quite.'

They sat, not looking at each other, reaching for words to close the space that had sprung, palpable, up between them. The bark of the stump was beginning to bite into the flesh of Nan's legs, stockings notwithstanding and it set her teeth on edge. Near at hand a blue-jay screamed. _Thief!_ It seemed to cry, _Thief, Thief, Thief!_ Nan turned her eyes heavenward, half wondering what it had lost, and felt ice bloom along her eyelids. She was _not_ said some inner voice of resolution, going to end this argument –if that's what it was –with tears. That was a child's trick, and she'd outgrown it –oh back after the loss of her beloved parasol to Dovie Johnson, she supposed. The bark had teeth, it must have. She could feel them gouging out the hollows under her kneecaps, little slivers jabbing at her like needles. _Thief, Thief, Thief,_ went the desolate blue-jay, so that Nan almost wished for the bells. She could stand them, tempered by Mara's explanation –the latest of so many rites and oddments on an ever-growing list of things to be woven into everyday life. But the bird, half-sobbing for something unknowable –'I can't do this anymore,' said Jerry, pulling her sharply back into the present.

'Can't or won't?' said Nan, not at all sure what he meant. She was more than half-afraid of asking.

'Can't,' with conviction. He sounded the way he had sounded when he had come up to Ingleside to tell her he was going to war. 'It was supposed to be _easy_ , angel, coming back here, and picking up where I'd left off. But it was a lifetime ago, and someone else's life –and I can't get back to it. God knows I've tried. They have such great expectations at home. Parliament and Ottawa and I don't know what else. And, however, I try and meet them, the war creeps in, has been doing it for ages, the bells and the pipes and I don't know what else –and I can't go back. It all seems pointless, somehow. Do you never find that?'

'No,' said Nan. 'No. Everything –always Jerry –the Sloanes and the Pyes and those awful Latin sight translations –all I've wanted to get back to is this, to us. But it's like holding an eel sometimes. I don't know where we are any more.' The tears that she had so far staved off betrayed her then, blossoming into little pellets of ice that stung her skin.

'There,' said Jerry, taking the sleeve of his coat to her cheeks clumsily, for she was sitting above him, 'that's not what I meant. You're the one that's good with words, angel. That's why it's such lunacy, the idea of me being a speaker anywhere. I say it all wrong, or I can't say anything –there aren't words. There aren't words for this either,' brushing her cheek with his fingertips, 'but that's something else. You're like the sun. Without the thought of you and what we'd have, I'd have gone to pieces well before now. Days come and go for you. Always for you.'

'That's all right then,' said Nan. She leaned her head against his chest, crushing the brim of her hat in the process, and allowed him to pull her down onto the ground, so that her weight rested partly on the snowbanks, partly on his knees. After the cold of the snow and the bite of the bark it was an unspeakable relief. She closed her eyes to shield them from the wind, and sat there, curled against him, counting his heartbeats, feeling them in her forehead and the bridge of her nose, telling them as the bells had tolled the life of the Kingsport child earlier. The air and the argument had restored to him his usual colour, so that when Nan opened her eyes again, he looked like the Jerry she remembered, the one she had described in so many economies, adventures as they became, of Lord Harrington. He smelled of the snow, that crisp, cold, almost clear scent, of sodden wool, and of the cloves that filled the boarding house closets to defend against moths, of hair oil and tea, and the mulch of the damp leaves where he'd exposed them, sitting so long in the snow.

'Come back,' he said suddenly, startling Nan. She opened her eyes painfully wide in the cold to stare at him, incredulous.

'Here?'

'Of course, here. You thought about it once –wished for it with a passion I was half jealous of. I'd never known you to want anything so much as that second degree. Come back.'

Nan opened her mouth, meaning to say she knew not what, and could only gape like a fish.

'I could do it, I think, if you came back. If you were here. Come back. Please.'

'Jerry, I _can't_.'

'Can't, or won't?' said he in his turn.

'Can't,' said Nan, almost fiercely. She shifted the better to settle on the snow, but stumbled against the tree stump, and fell instead. Snow seeped under the collar and sleeves of her coat, but the wetness of it scarcely registered.

'If you mean the school –'

'Of _course_ I mean the school! I've promised to stay the year!' said Nan, colour rising, her feel cheeks growing hot with feeling.

'Teachers change hands mid-year all the time. They get ill or they marry or –'

'Are you asking then?'

It was Jerry's turn to start.

'You haven't, you know,' said Nan when no answer seemed forthcoming. 'Not properly. Faith had mother's circlet from Jem, and Mara had ritual, but I had the indistinct promise that if you came back you'd say something and that in the meantime not to wait.'

'An instruction I thought we'd agreed you'd ignored,' said Jerry.

'And that absolves you keeping your part, does it? It made sense when the war was on Jerry. I could explain it to Mums and believe what I said –but there _isn't_ a war now and all the sense is gone out of it.'

'No,' said Jerry. He reached for her but Nan had by then scrabbled to the security of the tree stump, brushing snow from her as she went. With a thought for the awful abrasive bark Nan tucked her knees under her chin. A bruise was blooming along her spine where it had collided with the tree bark earlier, and her skirt was damp and clinging to her. She thought obscurely of Nelly Dean warning against damp feet and wondered how it was that even in the heat of an argument with Jerry about what the future looked like, she could still be ambushed by literature –and unlikely pieces of it at that.

'Not like this, angel,' Jerry said now, softening. 'Not to salve an argument. You wouldn't want that. I don't.'

'No,' said Nan, her breath going out of her all at once. It was as if someone had taken a pin to her lungs, or perhaps a board, because, suddenly, unaccountably, her larynx and throat gave up on working all together and she could only sob painfully, her throat hard and tight with constricted feeling, exhausted by the cost of the conversation, of keeping abreast of its tacks and turns, of holding her future and his in both hands and trying somehow to make sense of it all.

'Come here,' said Jerry, 'Come here.' But in fact, he went to her, knelt by her and wrapped her arms tight around the coiled spring of her, cocooning her in his coat, the brim of his hat jostling hers out of place and exposing her forehead to the onslaught of the weather. It should have made breathing harder, his hands folded tight over her sternum, all logic said so, but in practice it worked the other way around.

'You're all cold,' said Jerry, breath warm against her ear. 'Let's get you home. Faith can be properly cross with me for upsetting you. It will make everything right, I promise.'

'You missed out Jem,' Nan said weakly.

'I must have been hoping he'd be out,' said Jerry, and gingerly pulled them to their feet.

'Must have been,' agreed Nan. Then, as she wove her arm through his, 'But when it came to the point, I'd have fought your corner.'

'I know,' Jerry said. 'A divided house and all that.'

They walked back through the woods, snow crunching under their feet. It was hard going: Nan's sodden skirts kept clinging to her ankles and every few feet she had to stop to untangle them, prise them free of her ankles, while Jerry waited, a prospect no doubt, that would have horrified Susan if she ever got to hear of it. Now and then little shards of ice rained from the treetops as the wind rattled them, and as they neared the town centre, the air began to fill with the comforting smell of smoke and fire as people made their homes ready for the dense cold promised by the blossoming twilight.

'Tell me something,' said Nan, stopping them short of St John's graveyard.

'Anything you like, darling,' Jerry said, and kissed the brim of her hat as if in sealing a pact.

'If you don't stay here…if you were to give it all up, politics and parliament and the old idea…what would you do instead?'

'I was afraid you'd ask that,' said Jerry. 'Or rather, I thought you would, sooner or later. You and your watertight plans.'

'I can adapt them,' said Nan, and Jerry raised a hand, waving away her indignation.

'I know,' he said. 'I've seen you do it. When the war was on for a start. If that wasn't an incursion on the universe, I don't know what was.' He leaned against the lych-gate of the graveyard, resting his full weight on his arms, the better to stretch his legs out behind him.

'What I'd do instead,' he said, apparently to the stones enclosed, 'well I don't know what you'd make of it, angel. It's not at all what we talked over.'

'You might try me,' said Nan, mustering patience.

'Mm. Something in that. When I was –away –do you remember me mentioning Michael Priest?'

Nan, wary of interrupting, only nodded. He was something to do with Jerry's regiment, she thought. His name had been dotted all through Jerry's letters. Michael, and John, and…Matthew, that was it. She could be sure because they had laughed at long distance about the popularity of biblical names among his men.

'There was some talk of his going with friends, sort of dividing up the country and painting it, and did I want to come. I didn't jump at it because –well I didn't know what you'd make of it to start with –and because I didn't want to intrude on something that had always been Faith's link to Mummy. After she died, I mean. Before, when we were little, we shared it. We lost long, golden hours to lying on the Maywater lawn sketching things. And then Mummy died and someone had to be…present…I guess I mean…so I stopped, and it became Faith's…and now I'm afraid of taking it away from her. Is that absurd?'

'No,' said Nan. 'Di, when she began thinking about the paper, even though it was photography she wanted to do for them, and not writing…she said something similar. Said would I mind, when I had always had that from Mums. She could see how close we were over it, and she thought working among writers…might be a tie to Walter, I suppose. But she didn't want to intrude on what Mums and I had, or detract from it.'

It was Jerry's turn to nod. He shifted his feet slightly, scuffing his shoes against the pavement as he recrossed his arms on the lych-gate.

'Then you will know. I never gave them much thought, all those Maywater idylls of days, until now, when the chance of beginning again, somewhere completely else, is almost intoxicating. I can't –and I wouldn't –ask you to go to the wild corners of the world and the ends of the earth if you didn't want it, angel. But will you risk the man I've become for the one you loved?'

'Always,' said Nan, softly, fiercely. 'If it comes to that, I'm not the same either. You said it yourself. I might ask the same of you.'

'Always,' Jerry said. The shadows were long, and the last of the light bleeding from the sky, a ball of taut red fire like a Christmas bauble. By its lingering glow Jerry held out a hand to Nan across the lych-gate. She came and joined him, interweaving gloved fingers with his. As the sun sank into the sea, he closed his spare hand over hers, and together they turned toward Larkrise.


	8. Police at the Funeral

_Thank you as ever for your reading and reviewing. I feel I ought to issue some sort of content warning heading into this chapter. I wouldn't call it graphic but if court executions as subject matter aren't to your taste, maybe leap to the last paragraph or so. I'm still not really sure how we got here. I didn't plan it, but it seemed necessary._

* * *

'Geordie had claimed the lionshead chair when Faith returned from a surgery, and was presiding over the little company from its depths, long legs stretched out before him, nursing a cup of tea while the fire snapped a counterpoint.

'Right,' said Geordie, from deep in the lionshead chair, 'I'll tell you what _hasn't_ happened, shall I? Henderson _wasn't_ drowned –because of his larynx –and he _didn't_ fall through the ice –because it was too thick for that –and he _didn't_ take that _Digitalis_ stuff –about the only useful thing we know –because his heart gave out. I don't suppose,' looking hopefully across the room at Jem and Teddy, 'either of you would care to offer a guess at what _did_ happen?'

Jem and Teddy continuing expressionless and unspeaking, Geordie turned towards a gangly man whose existence Faith had so far failed to process. Now he handed over a blue folder as Geordie said in sonorous tones,'Constable Benwick, what about you? Any idea what –or indeed who –did for Henderson? A theorem? A guess? A stab in the dark?'

'No sir,' said the terrified Benwick, 'not me, sir. Absolutely no idea, sir.'

'S'all right, Benwick,' said Teddy mildly, 'he doesn't bite. Normally.'

'Gremlins acting up?' asked Faith as the constable beat a hasty retreat from the room. Apparently he was not at all reassured by Teddy's words.

'Yes, as it happens. Croup or something meddlesome like that. But the problem here,' prodding at Benwick's unsuspecting blue folder, 'is with the Superintendent, who wants to know why we haven't signed off on Henderson. The family would like to bury him.'

'Tell the Superintendent from me that the family can bury him and welcome,' said Jem. 'We _have_ got a cause of death. For God's sake get him out of that bloody icebox and let his family bury him or administer last rites, or whatever it is they go in for.'

'I think they've got to be alive for last rites, Doc,' Teddy felt it helpful to say. Improbably this got a laugh from Geordie, who nodded agreement. 'You can ask Mara,' he said. 'More her prominence that than ours, I should think.'

'Oh, I bet Susan makes it all so much High Romishness together,' said Faith laughingly. 'I've quite lost track.'

At Jem's prompting Teddy rose and disappeared into the kitchen, whence he could be heard rattling about with mugs and what sounded like an over-burdened farmhouse teapot.

'You're _sure_ ,' Jem said over the noise, 'Henderson didn't fall on that ice? You do get thin patches, you know.'

'Do you?' said Geordie hopefully. He watched, perplexed as his returning sergeant, surgeon and surgeon's wife traded looks that could only be described as amused.

'Not a country man, are you sir,' said Teddy, before grinning broadly at him. He handed the tea to Faith, who took it gratefully.

' _I was raised/ pent mid cloisters dim_ –know that one, Teddy?'

Teddy stared at him blankly, and Jem frowned the concentrated frown of one who half-remembers something. 'Coleridge,' he said suddenly, inspired. And when Teddy goggled at him he elaborated, 'Mums liked that one.'

'I can't decide if I do,' said Geordie. 'Judith keeps seeing zombies and vampires in his stuff and I'm not sure she's wrong. But I do like that bit. Heard of Ottawa?'

That made the others laugh.

'Sure,' said Teddy, 'but that begs the question what you're doing here, sir.'

'Rarely, Teddy, does anything beg the question. You were telling me about thin patches?'

Jem shrugged indifference. 'They're just what they sound like. You miss them sometimes because the water goes dark underneath, or there's snow overtop them, and _that's_ not impossible. You'll recall the night we found him.'

A collective shiver went around the room as they recalled the blizzard they had braved in the name of hauling Henderson out of the duck pond. Geordie was still mulling over this last when, 'Is this the Henderson case?' said a voice from the place in the doorway Faith had lately vacated, 'Do you think he was murdered? They're saying it was heart failure. Have you got a suspect? What can you tell me about –'

She stopped as their quartet turned to look at her. Geordie's eyes had narrowed, and Teddy was goggling, whereas Jem looked more as if he were a fish baited by an especially effective lure. Faith was too surprised to register any other sensation, even curiosity. It was routine practice for Mara to let herself in without knocking, Shirley too, and Di when she needed to vent about the reporters' reluctance to tell her exactly _when_ they needed her pictures by, or what of, or other information normal people would have been forgiven for considering vital to her job description. Jerry too made free of the latch, and Carl, hallooing through the door on the rare occasion they arrived and found the chain across or –still rarer –the door locked. Una naturally, persisted in knocking. Geordie had used to, but even he had grown careless of late. But they had never yet had a stranger let themselves in unannounced, and it was hard not to be intrigued as much as startled. Faith turned to put a face to the voice, and was confronted by a slip of a girl, bony, long-limbed and almost boyish in her physique. Faith placed her anywhere between fourteen and sixteen. Certainly not older. She had ink on her fingers in a way that brought Nan to mind, that same tell-tale sheen all down the right ring finger, and an unruly tangle of dark hair that she had obviously tried and failed to neaten at some recent junction. Pins had half-slipped their moorings and where just discernible around her ears, but it was her eyes that most struck Faith. They snapped and crackled like the blue flame at the heart of a well-kindled fire as she stood awaiting answers to her barrage of questions. Mentally Faith shook her head. As Norman Douglas was wont to say, you couldn't fault pluck.

'You appear to have acquired a reporter, Jem,' said Geordie needlessly, eyebrows knitting together high on his forehead. In the doorway, the young woman flashed them a smile like a sunbeam, stuck out a hand stained and scented with newsprint, and said, not quite chagrined, 'Sorry, I couldn't resist. I've done this all wrong. Catherine –Kitty –Foster. Di said you might help.'

'With a story?' said Jem, incredulous. All the same, he rose and took the ink-spattered hand she offered and shook it, if not quite solemnly then sincerely.

'No, that was me. I heard you talking and I couldn't help diving in. Anything for a story, you know.'

 _The Chronicle_ ,' said Geordie from the depths of the lionshead chair, 'isn't it? I know I've seen your name about. Never put a face to it though.'

'Oh, you've read it!' Her face registered pleasure and frustration in dizzying succession. 'I didn't think you would have –all those bloody stories about garden parties and fetes. _I_ wouldn't read them, if it were me.'

Teddy, who had long since sat to attention on discovering their guest, his back flush with the sofa, laughed, not unkindly. Even so, Miss Foster's eyes flashed dangerously and Jem said in warning, 'Teddy…' To Catherine Foster he extended an arm and said as he gestured her into the vacant wingback chair, 'Miss Foster–Kitty –may I?' and at her nod, 'Kitty, you were saying something about Di thinking we could help?' At a nod from Jem, Teddy scrabbled to his feet and trotted duly off to the kitchen again. Kitty meanwhile, had sunk into depths of the wingback chair. She now jolted to attention and said as one shocked with electricity, 'Oh! Yes! I almost forgot. About somewhere to stay. Di seemed to think…' Here she scrabbled for words and accepted gratefully the mug of tea Teddy brought her.

'Do reporters keep police hours then?' asked Teddy. Kitty, twisting the mug awkwardly around so that the handle rested in her left hand, made a face as she weighed whether or not she was being made fun of.

'No. Yes. No –I mean, _respectable_ _women_ ,' adopting devastatingly plummy accent readily evocative of any number of boarding house matrons Faith had encountered, 'don't chase around after persons without so much as a by-your-leave and demand to know their private affairs.'

Even Geordie was finding it hard not to laugh. Faith made no such effort. She caught Kitty's eye and capitulated, Kitty following her over the precipice.

'Anyway,' said Kitty when she recovered, 'the last straw was me chasing down and tackling Hartley Wordsworth to the ground after that debate in the town hall the other week. It was difficult in heels –well _you_ can imagine –' here nodding so vigorously at Faith that her black curls came free of what pins were left in her hair and tumbled giddily down her shoulders. 'and he _still_ wouldn't give me a comment. I had to ring the council and they _hate_ it when I do that. Actually, so do I, they never understand about deadlines and how I have to stick to them of be strung over hot coals by the editor. But the point is, Mrs. Jennings simply couldn't cope with that. I'd made the mistake of chasing the irritating Mr Wordsworth down where she could _see_ me you see, and there was no recovering anything even approximating a good opinion from her after that. Not that I mind much about Mrs. Jennings opinions. I _do_ mind about having somewhere to stay though, and Di was very good about it when I said, thought you mightn't mind, seeing as –'

'We've done it before,' said Jem, nodding. Geordie was gently twitching in the corner, no doubt horrified by the idea of a reporter imminently taking up residence in what had heretofore been the sparest of spare rooms at Larkrise. Never mind a reporter prone, by her own admission, to tackling the unsuspecting to the ground in the name of a quote. What she would do for a story…Faith smiled. She couldn't help it. _If I'd done journalism_ , she thought _, in some exceptionally unlikely universe, I'd have been her sort._ She looked critically at Kitty, her own eyebrows drawing together in consideration. She looked…well she looked _young_ , that was the thing of it. Say she _was_ sixteen, Faith thought generously, that was still like turning Rilla of the war years out to fend for herself, and why? Because the spare room was the one room in the house not awash in dizzying Morrisonian patterns? That was no reason at all. Faith risked a glance at Jem and saw he was thinking it too –Di might have thought to come with her, but in the event that one of the journalists at _The Chronicle_ had got around to asking her to do something more than make the tea, Faith could see why Di wouldn't have risked declining.

'Of course,' Kitty now said hastily, 'I'm a useless cook. If I ever get off the bloody garden party and flower show beat I'll have to have someone to do for me, but I _can_ pay. Not much, I mean –Mrs. Jennings's wasn't exactly what you'd call a _good_ place, but I can. So you wouldn't need to worry about that. And I'll be ever so quiet. You'll hardly notice I'm here...' Teddy looked on the verge of laughter but a kick in the shins from Jem turned this sharply into a coughing fit.

'No need for that,' said Jem, looking belatedly to Faith. She nodded. 'We don't ask anything of Teddy. Though fair warning –we're hardly a centre of domestic order. You want to look to him,' nodding at Geordie, while that man panicked mutely, 'for that.'

Much giddy squealing followed from the quarter of the wingback chair, and then descended on Jem to engulf him in a hug. 'Thank you,' she said, letting him go and throwing her arms around Faith next. 'Thank you so much. You won't regret it, I promise.' Then she rocked back on her feet, dropped down onto the floor, and said with a tilt of her head upwards to look at them, 'That _was_ the Henderson case you were discussing when I came in, wasn't it? They're saying Alwyn Cressey was in for questioning. Do you have an opinion?'

Geordie groaned. Teddy looked indignant. Jem said, 'Kitty,' warningly and Faith, mug pressed to her lips, stifled a smile in the warmth of the china. Just as well they weren't after normalcy and domestic quietude, Faith thought. Kitty looked set to ensure they lived on the nerve-edge of the world and its affairs hereafter.

Geordie, in the interim, had dared to give his attention to the blue folder. Now he cursed softly. '

In response to Jem's raised eyebrows he shunted the file in his direction. 'Sorry,' he said gravely as he did so, recalling his company. Faith laughed, Kitty too.

'Ah,' said Jem, mid-perusal.

'Doc?'

'Here,' said Jem, handing the file on. 'They've only gone and found a pick. It didn't _look_ like a cut-out hole, but then, on a night that awful I guess we wouldn't have noticed the edges.'

'This,' said Geordie austerely, 'is _strictly_ off-the-record.'

'Of course,' said Kitty. 'No notes, you see? And I'll never remember a word without them.'

'That's all right then,' Teddy said, and to Jem, 'we'd probably have broke them anyway getting Henderson out.'

'Mm,' said Jem. 'You know, I don't see it.'

So saying he crossed the room and retrieved an elaborately carved chess set from the windowsill –his father's idea of a Christmas gift.

'I had no idea you played,' said Geordie.

'Oh he doesn't,' said Faith. 'See if this isn't strategizing of the most improbable order.'

Paying them no mind, Jem plucked a rook from the white side of the board. 'Henderson,' he said, holding it aloft. Carefully he set it down in the centre of the board. 'He was found here. Now this,' brandishing a bishop, 'is Cressey. What did you say his first name was, Kitty?'

'Alwyn.'

'Right, Alwyn. Much better to have a first name to go with. Now, Alwyn Cressey rang in the body. He was standing where, Teddy, when you and Benwick got to the pond?'

He handed Teddy the bishop. Teddy took it, and looking dubious, set the bishop down a square or two from the rook.

'A little more faith than that, Teddy,' said Geordie, trying not to laugh. His eyes were smiling.

'You'd better show me, sir,' said Teddy, and indeed, Jem was holding out a pawn to Geordie.

'What's this then,' he asked, leaing forward from the lionshead chair to accept the chess piece, 'the pick?'

'In one. Where was it found, would you say?'

Geordie frowned at the board. 'Where's the duck pond?' he wanted to know.

'About here,' said Jem, tapping the board with Henderson-the-rook, 'seeing as we found our man _in_ it.'

'Of course. I make the pick to have been discovered…here.' The pawn clicked lightly against the board as Geordie set it down. Faith looked to Kitty and saw that she too was absorbed in the scene.

'Mad,' said Teddy, watching them. 'You're mad. The pair of you.'

'Not quite,' said Jem. 'Now look, it happened like this. Here's Henderson and Cressey,' tapping the rook and bishop, 'running along. Why? Because they're both rowers and it's the off-season. We know all this, Cressey told you so back in that interview room. We also know, again, courtesy of Cressey, that Henderson took those tablets you found in the case. Or rather, he had been. Someone had swapped them recently.'

'I thought you said –' began Geordie, but he got no further. Jem raised a hand in apology.

'I said they were Foxglove,' he said. 'My fault entirely that. I saw the stamp on them and took it for granted. You won't remember, but I never got much of a look at them.'

'Then how could you say –'

'From the press, of course,' said Faith, so that three sets of eyes swivelled her way in bafflement. Jem only nodded complacently.

'The _what_?' Geordie asked, with a suspicious look at Kitty.

'Medical press,' said Jem quickly, 'the thing that stamps the pills. Better than a fingerprint for telling what's come from where. Now the _Digitalis_ , as I thought, had Dr. Cressey's stamp all over it.'

'Did you say –' began Kitty, eyes agog, but a look from Geordie quelled her.

'Hold up a bit,' said Teddy, 'I thought that was the name of your bishop.' He tapped the piece in question.

I'm coming to that. Bear with me a moment. Lovely man, by the by, Dr. Cressey. Anyway, it was his stamp on the tablets, and they were the right size and shape for the _Digitalis_. Obviously they weren't though, because if they'd worked our man Henderson would have been seeing yellow. But that's the other thing we got from Cressey the younger; Henderson _wasn't_ seeing yellow. The opposite in fact. Now, as you'll recall, we left them running towards the duck pond.'

Teddy and Geordie nodded. 'Right,' said Jem, 'well that's the thing. On the heart stuff, Henderson would have been fine. But they're obviously racing –I bet you find they're quite competitive, Henderson and young Cressey –and Henderson _hasn't_ got the heart stuff. He's got whatever these,' proffering the tablets from his coat pocket, 'turn out to be. Sugar and all sorts, I shouldn't wonder. Now, they get to the duck pond, and one of them has the idea to race across it. No telling who, of course. It's the kind of idiotic stunt any boy would pull. They get a little over halfway, and Henderson falls.' Jem, who had been moving his chess pieces as he spoke, now gave Henderson-the-rook a judicious prod. 'You see? And he falls hard –on one of the thin patches, by rather bad luck. Maybe young Cresey tries to help him, maybe not. It doesn't really matter though, because by the time Henderson bobs to the surface –'

'He's dead,' said Geordie, nodding. 'It's all very neat, Jem, but I don't see –quite –how it would be done. You never think the doctor's involved?'

'No,' said Kitty, startling them. 'Strictly off the record, he thinks the son's involved. I'm right, aren't I?'

''I think someone with access to his press was.'

Teddy's eyes bulged. 'You _do_ think it was the boy.'

'I did tell you, I bet you find there was competition between them.'

'But how…'said Geordie, feebly.

'Oh, that's easy enough. He lives with a doctor, after all, doesn't he? He'd have means and opportunity, delivering stuff for his father,' Jem said reasonably.

'You know an awful lot about it, Doc,' said Teddy, making Jem laugh.

'It was my life, wasn't it? Delivering prescriptions for Dad and all that sort of thing. We all did it –never occurred to any of us to commit murder with the knowledge though.'

'Ah,' said Geordie, 'but you weren't a rower, were you? Fierce stakes, it has. The sponsorships you know. I never came up for recommendation, but the people that did…'

'Worth dying over?' asked Teddy with incredulity.

'Funny you should ask, sergeant. I never thought. But _now_ ,' with emphasis, 'now I suggest you go do whatever it is one does to determine the presence of Foxglove or otherwise in those tablets, Jem, and Teddy and I will go have a wee word with Cressey senior. The son too, if we can wrangle it. I take it,' this last as an afterthought, 'you think the pick has nothing to do with it?'

Jem picked up the pawn and tapped at its square of chessboard. 'You found it here,' he observed, ' _next_ to the pond –someone's put it there in the hope you never make the connection about prescription rounds, that's my guess.'

'Well it's the most sensible thing anyone's said all morning,' said Geordie. 'I for one, am for it.'

So saying, he rose from the lionshead chair, donned his cap, gave Teddy's collar a tug to straighten it, and propelled them both towards the door.

'We'll leave you and your wife to talk details with Miss Foster, shall we Doctor? You can check up on the Foxglove or whatever it's called when you get a chance.' Behind Jem he paused, a hand on his shoulder, and said, almost glib, 'I've a favour to ask.'

'Oh?' said Jem, tilting his head backward to catch Geordie's eye. 'Go on.'

'They're sentencing Robert Lowry tomorrow –he of the hatpin murder, as you'll recall. Come with me?'

There was a beat, no more than an intake of air, but still Faith caught it, and then Jem nodded. 'Of course.'

* * *

It proved a white night. The clock on the little bedside table was unreadable, though Jem could hear it ticking endlessly away the seconds as they passed. He shifted under the Country Fair quilt trying to settle, his shoulder nudging Faith's nose in the process and dislodging her cheek from his scapula. His skin hummed a little where she had been, as even under the quilt the cold found him out, so that he missed the warmth of her, her breath gentle against his skin. He turned over again for good measure, warily, lest he wake her, but it was no good. He thought Faith stirred a little as he got out of bed, but she had had a long day and proved, after all, only to be murkily awake.

'Nothing to worry about,' said Jem, as he bent and kissed her forehead. 'Won't be long.'

He trod carefully though, even so, dodging here the stair that squeaked, there the floorboard that groaned. Was that someone stirring upstairs? He hovered on the bottom-most stair lest it was. Nothing. In the dark of the hall Jem fumbled for his coat. His gloves were folded into one pocket but he was short a scarf. No matter. Outside the air was fresh and crisp after the thickness of the sleep-infused house. It dappled his skin and registered hard and clear in his lungs. Without much thought for where he was going, Jem set off down the walk. His head was full of ghosts and shadows, and needed tidying before sleep came even remotely near him, and he knew it.

It had happened like this during the war, of course. He recalled that plainly, nights after battles, forays into the trenches, where he had lain awake counting his dead, wondering how he would ever draft the necessary letters. And then later, at the prison camp wondering...so many things. About home and his men and the shape of the days to come. The thing that had got into his leg like a canker, and what were they doing for it? He had soothed himself then by plotting out the procedure. Perhaps…

'What are you doing out this way?' Shirley's voice in the dark brought Jem sharply back to the present, the crunch of twigs and packed snow underfoot, the chill of the weather at his exposed throat. He turned up his coat at the collar and shrugged.

'I wanted to clear my head. Dare I ask –' he stopped, unsure suddenly if teasing was something they ran to. With Walter, of course, in certain moods, on certain themes, it had been verboten. But Shirley was laughing, and held up a case in his far hand.

'You're all right,' he said, a smile in his voice. 'No need to summon a pageant of avenging virtues. Fox Corner called.' He seemed to squint at Jem through the dark. 'Will you come along?'

It was something else to focus on. Jem fell easily into step beside him. The snow crunched and crackled underfoot, tree branches snapped, and around them the shape of an absence rose almost solid between them.

'I'm sorry,' said Jem clumsily, after an elastic moment had passed, 'we never seemed to have much time together before.'

'Six years is an age though,' said Shirley comfortably, 'when you're still growing. And –was it a year between you and Walter? –hardly a thing.'

'Not quite that,' said Jem. The twigs and the snow crackled underfoot. Overhead an owl hooted. _Screech Owl_ , thought Jem reflexively. He missed hearing them at Larkrise. With a wild leap towards levity, he said, 'But I _was_ right, wasn't I? All those years ago?'

'What about?'

'You,' said Jem, 'and not loving by halves.' That brought laughter from Shirley and Jem found himself joining in, the weight that had settled so tight in his chest leavening in the process.

'Does anyone at home?' said Shirley, recovering first, and Jem, breathless, had to concede the point. 'Why I wanted to talk that day, I suppose,' said Jem. 'I never _did_ say to Walter, as it fell out –but then, I have a feeling he would have needed the telling less anyway.'

'Hm,' said Shirley noncomitally. Then, suddenly, 'What time we had you and I, there was always understanding in it, I think.' The twigs snapped underfoot, and sprays of conifer whipped past them where the trees grew too close together. They were at Fox Corner by then, a light over the door and one at the back of the house indicative that someone sat up yet in anticipation. Shirley rang for ingress and then a broad, bustling person appeared, filling the doorway before negotiating her way past them and leading the way out towards the back of the house. They were headed for the kennels, Jem supposed, with a thought for the hound Shirley had seen to back in autumn. Instead they drew abreast of a hen house, the air full of scents of cornmeal and feathers.

'I'll leave you to it,' said their guide, and turned away, leaving Shirley kneeling over a tangle of chicken wire and animal limbs.

'Not one of the dogs?' said Jem, with a thought for Dog Monday, and wincing a little at the noise this one made. It sounded like a dying thing.

'No,' dryly. 'A fox. They're fond of them here.'

'At Fox Corner? You don't say.' Then, as Jem thought about it, 'Though if it was trying to get _into_ that henhouse, surely anyone else would –'

'Shoot it? Oh, they would. As it happens, I tend to think that's the humane thing to do in any case. Look at it.'

'I think I shan't, if it's all the same to you.' This close the air was heavy with the smell of blood. A splash of light from the lantern showed it warm and red on the melted snow. Jem looked at Shirley, and knew he had meant it, about the humanity of killing the fox. His jaw was set and a flash of steel in the lamplight suggested he had already retrieved something suitably to purpose.

'What will you tell them?' asked Jem.

'That it couldn't be helped. You all right?'

In fact, Jem wasn't; he still couldn't quite shake thoughts of Dog Monday, little loyal Monday who had waited for him all those years, doomed to wait longer now, until Jem should come back from Kingsport. And Monday was still easier to think about than the other thing. He squeezed his eyes shut and then there was silence, deep and dark, the pungent smell of blood welling hot on the air. Overhead an owl hooted. Two long, one short, the whistle of his boyhood, the signal he had stolen from the woods to summon Faith for moonlit rambles. It felt a world ago.

'How,' he asked much later, when they had passed the fox's fate over to Mrs. Gower of the kitchen, and been given cups of tea for their trouble, 'how do you do it?'

'Do what?' Shirley wanted to know, apparently brought up short by the question.

'Just –that,' Jem jerked his head in the direction of the buried fox, ' –as if it were nothing at all, and then go on with the evening.'

'Needs must,' said Shirley. 'Why?'

'It doesn't all seem…'Jem stopped, words elusive. In the dark, he missed his mark and pitched forward into the snow and the crackling twigs. Shirley's hand caught him at the elbow and hauled him upright.

'Doesn't seem what?' he said as they walked on.

'Pointless, I think I mean,' said Jem. 'Look,' suddenly fired with an idea, 'when the war was on –well the things we did, they needed doing. We couldn't have the Germans on our doorstep so we did the only thing we could and that was all right because it kept our home safe, and anyway, it would all stop afterwards. Needs must, as you say. Only…' He shrugged, recalled that his brother couldn't see him, and reached clumsily for the rest of the thought.

'Only sometimes you wonder if you don't still do it?' Shirley said, finishing for him.

'I'm still dooming them,' said Jem, who had only meant to answer in the affirmative. 'it's peacetime, and I'm still sending men to die.'

'That's to preserve the good we fought back though, isn't it? Not quite the same thing as having a barrel at your head if you don't give the word Go.'

'No,' said Jem. 'Do me a favour?'

'Of course.'

'There's somewhere I've got to be Monday morning. Can I drag you along?'

They were back at the turning for Larkrise. Shirley nodded. 'Of course,' he said, then raised a hand in parting and continued on down the lane.

* * *

Monday dawned grey and sere. Jem, who had drifted imperfectly to sleep around sunrise and came uneasily awake to the rich smell of bacon and fried eggs. Startled, he turned on his side to take stock of Faith's absence, but she was still there, warm under the Country Fair quilt, her hair lightly scented with the lemon and baking soda she had washed it in the previous evening.

'Thought Kitty said she couldn't cook?' she said now, her voice still thick with sleep.

'No,' said Jem, 'so did I,' and in a trice he was out of bed, headless of the cold floorboards, anxious to ensure the kitchen was not imminently succumbing to a fiery inferno.

It wasn't. An excursion downstairs yielded only Teddy at the hob, placidly frying tomatoes, turning sausages and now depositing rounds of blood pudding in a vacant frying pan. It sizzled in satisfying fashion, the air filling with the metallic tang of blood as it cooked. The bacon was under towelling, Jem saw. He swiped a piece and inquired around it, 'What's all this then?'

Teddy shrugged. 'Thought it would make a change from oatmeal.'

'Which you've suddenly taken against because…'Jem waved a hand inquisitorially as he sought elaboration.

'Used to work for the boys,' said Teddy, extracting golden-white eggs from the frying pan at his elbow. 'Took some of the grimness out of tests and termtime resuming, that sort of thing.'

'Supposing they eat it, of course,' said Faith, appearing on Jem's heels and swatting his hand away from the platter of bacon. 'Carl and Bruce were that way. Una _still_ is.'

Teddy gave what Jem took for an affirmative hum, and on they went talking diversionary tactics while Jem retreated to the table. It was all right for them. They weren't faced with the prospect of Robert Lowry's hanging. He almost wondered how Teddy had wrangled it, but then shook his head at the thrushes on the wall. He wouldn't wish that spectacle on anyone, Teddy least of all. How much more so Geordie, who seemed by turns to alternate between the benevolent uncle and superior to Teddy? No, he couldn't see his way to Teddy being there at Geordie's elbow when the sackcloth came over Lowry's head.

'Any idea what it will be like?' asked Kitty, sliding into the place opposite him, and preternaturally bright for seven o'clock on a grisly Monday morning. _Gruesome_ came to Jem's mouth, but then he looked at Kitty with her two blue eyes like pins and her crooked smile, daubed an unlikely red, and shook his head instead. He wouldn't wish the spectacle on her either.

'Well?' she said, mistaking his silence for thoughtfulness. She looked for all the world as if she were about to commence an interview. Warily, Jem looked around for signs of a Dictaphone.

'Bleak, I expect,' he said with as much neutrality as he could muster. Then, feeling he ought somehow to make it up to her, 'I'll tell you about it after, shall I?'

' _Would_ you?' said Kitty, and because he couldn't laugh at her, Jem fell to coughing.

'All right?' Teddy asked, setting heaping plate before him. It smelled glorious.

'We appear to have acquired a resident lark,' he said, with a grin for Kitty. 'Where did you learn all this anyway?'

Teddy shrugged, then slid a plate in front of Kitty. 'Told you ages ago, Doc,' he said. 'I have brothers.'

Shirley called for him at eight sharp, abruptly curtailing Jem's efforts to cheat Teddy of the washing up. 'Since when,' said Shirley, hearing this, 'do you take an interest in culinary things? In old days Susan couldn't even get you to sit and peel carrots.'

'He still doesn't,' said Teddy. 'He's hedging, is all. The boys used to do it too. Ever so keen to help on Monday mornings. Not so much first thing on a Saturday though.' That got laughter from the girls and a smile from Shirley. 'I take it,' he said to Teddy, 'you know what all this is about then? I'm still in the dark.'

'Tell you as we go,' said Jem.

* * *

Geordie was waiting for them outside the prison. He was rigged up smarter than Jem had ever seen him, from top hat to polished shoes. Next to him, Jem felt decidedly underdressed, and it wasn't that he'd not made an effort. It had seemed the least he could do.

'I hope you don't mind,' began Jem clumsily, as Geordie raised a hand to Shirley in greeting. Even so, Jem still felt suddenly very much the schoolboy caught out at some misdemeanour.

'On the contrary,' said Geordie, clapping a hand on Jem's shoulder, 'It'll give the lad a good send-off. That's something anyway.'

Bleak turned out to be not so much an understatement as a misconception. It was Geordie led the way down grim, grey corridors lit by weak, watery sunlight and Jem found himself thinking the whole ordeal wasn't bleak so much as it was dismal and austere. As if even the sun couldn't muster an appearance for the departure of Robert Lowry from earthly affairs.

They halted outside a portentous wooden door, and Geordie knocked admittance. It was dusty inside, and stuffy, but at least it was private. There weren't even windows to pry. In the far corner of the room stood uncle Jo, and Jem startled a little at the sight of him –but of course, someone must do this job, and who better suited? Well, that was one small thing to the good, Jem thought. If nothing else the man praying the rite for the dead would be sincere about it. And that –well that counted for a lot.

It was over very quickly. A drab man in grey flannel, hitherto unnoticed, read out the sentence. Jo, with a mixture of gravity and sympathy that made Jem's stomach lurch painfully, lead the recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Lowry declined to join in, though Jem did, numb-lipped. He looked at Lowry and thought of Faith –would she have seen that spark in him she so obviously had seen in her patients? He thought she probably would. He recalled her telling him once about how she had sometimes had cause to heal the Germans. _They brought them_ _in_ _,_ her letters had read. _Our men, Jem, holding them upright. At first I looked askance, but then one of them said 'Please Miss: It's not them as is the enemy' –and Jem, what in the name of God could I say to that? The man in his arms looked so_ _human_ _and he was dying in front of me…_ Of course she had done it. And of course, he thought, she would have found the divine in Lowry, even now as the linen sack came down over his head. He'd never said it aloud, but he thought it was one of the things he loved in her. Abruptly the trap door gave way, and Lowry danced for them, a desolate hornpipe with no end. The floor groaned as they stepped forward, Jo first, and then Geordie, Jem and Shirley at his heels, the man in the grey flannel belatedly, with suitable indifference, and pulled on Lowry's suspended body. It seemed he twitched a moment longer, and then went still.

* * *

It was a relief after the stuffy, close atmosphere of the prison to step out into the watery sunlight. Shirley had fallen half a pace behind to discuss what sounded like the finer nuances of some theological point or other with Jo. Obliquely Jem wondered whose doctrine it was –the snatches of it drifting back to him on the wind didn't sound especially like the stuff of their childhood sermons. But he only gave it a thought. The majority of his brain was focused on keeping up with Geordie, something he had to half-jog to achieve. His lungs were working overtime, a bad combination of exertion and greediness for air that was spiced with balsam instead of death. Apparently, Geordie noticed, because he stopped at the foot of the walkway and said mildly, 'Wait up a bit. Mustn't get too far ahead. You look done in.'

'How are you not?' asked Jem around another lungful of air. It almost hurt to breath. His blood was pounding hard in his veins, he could feel it in all sorts of unlikely places; his chest of course, but his arms too, his stomach and knees and abdomen.

'Needs must,' said Geordie. 'Sorry to drag you along. Only, well, I'd been having a word with the university, you know. You're good at what you do, obviously, and we work well together, and Teddy's devoted to you, which is more than I'd have said about his relationship with Mac. And it struck me as rather a good thing that we keep you on. The pay would probably be abysmal until the university declared you graduated, but I thought, if you were willing…only I thought you'd better see the other side of it first, before making up your mind.'

'Right,' said Jem, head faintly buzzing. 'Thanks. On both counts.'

'Obviously,' Geordie said, 'you'll want to discuss it first with Faith, but it's worth thinking about.'

'No,' said Jem, 'I mean it _is_ –but I won't. I mean, Faith won't object if I'm set on it. It's not how we work.'

'That's all right then. We can keep you?'

'One condition,' said Jem, and Geordie tilted his head, expectant. 'Promise me the next favour you ask will have nothing whatever to do with the Lord High Executioner?'

* * *

They were laughing when the others caught them up, anxious to be let in on the joke. Shirley caught the humour off the others, but Jo only shook his head in bafflement. He left them shortly before the Patterson street turn, the better to call on a parishioner. At the forking for Evensong, Shirley fel back, and Geordie waved him on indulgently. 'You look as if you had an appointment to keep,' he said.

'Hadn't particularly,' said Shirley, as he lingered at the fork in the road, 'now I rather think I need it.'

Jem nodded understanding. He swallowed and then said, 'Thanks. For coming along.'

'No bother,' said Shirley, before setting off of the house.

After the bluster of the past few days Larkrise seemed oddly somnolent with only Faith in the house. That she had been at least half-deep in study was attested to by the textbook on the spindly-legged table, sprawled open at a chapter on the humours of the spleen. That she hadn't been absorbed in it Jem deduced from the way she was all but in the hall to meet them, her exclamation, 'I was listening for you,' almost redundant. More necessarily she said as she claimed hats and coats, 'Teddy said to tell you he's sorry to miss you. Apparently, you were right about Cressey and he's gone off to make the arrest.'

Geordie made a noise back in his throat registering approbation and frustration simultaneously, plucked his hat and coat from Faith's arm, and with a nod to them, turned for the door. He paused, hand to the knob of it to say, 'Not to worry, I'll remember –no High Executioners next time.'

Jem waved him away with a smile and followed Faith into the sitting room, whence was discernible the spread-eagled textbook and a vast quantity of neglected tea things. Faith picked up the teapot with the intention of resteeping the tea.

'The younger Cressey has had it then,' said Jem to her retreating back. Faith hummed affirmation.

'Poor blighter,' said Jem feelingly, sinking onto the sofa.

Teapot still in hand, Faith joined him, her unengaged arm weaving around his shoulders, her head coming to roost on his shoulder. 'This isn't really about him, is it?' she said, and Jem shrugged, there being no need for words.

'Tell me about it?'

'I think I'd better,' said Jem. 'Where are the others? Teddy you've said.'

'Kitty's gone to write up the local antique fair,' said Faith, and Jem sensed she was trying to stifle a smile, lest Kitty somehow find out the fact of it later. It didn't matter, the sentiment of it was warm in her voice as it rippled against his carotid artery.

'That's all right then,' said Jem. He lifted her chin and kissed her mouth.

'I thought you were telling me what had happened?'

'Later,' said Jem. 'I'd sort of like a corner to retreat to first.'

'Hm.' Faith set the teapot down with a rattle, little droplets of water spattering in sun-bright confusion across the coffee table. Her hands eased from around his shoulders to his back, where her fingers dug not ungently into the cotton of his shirt and worked at the whorls of tension that had accumulated. It was blissful.

'There's something in your Bible, isn't there,' said Jem, 'about virtuous women and rubies?'

'Mm –but they never wrote it with me in mind. No, what you want,' pressing a kiss to his clavicle, 'is more along the lines of _in the clefts of the rock, in the secret_ _places_ _of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy_ _voice_ –'Faith stopped short, eyes bright with sunlight. She wound a hand into a knot at the base of his neck and said, 'I'd like to know your secret places you know, if you'd let me.'

'And so you shall, darling. Even this one. As soon as there's words for this one, you shall have it. In the meantime though…'

'Oh this will do,' said Faith, relenting, and allowing herself to be kissed. 'This will more than do for now.'


	9. Death at the Theatre

_With thanks, always to all of you reading and/or reviewing. I've fallen behind on posting, but I've always valued knowing you're there. There's a lot of this chapter, though I've done what I can to shorten it. Put the kettle on, sit down by the fire and enjoy it, won't you?_

* * *

Geordie met Teddy at the station house not long after the installation of Kitty with the mild inquiry, 'Has your resident reporter settled in nicely?'

' _Don't_ ,' said Teddy, succinctly. Opposite him, the inspector grinned. 'As bad as that, is it?'

'You know what I never wanted? Sisters.'

'Don't say that, Tibby and Rachel will be heartbroken.'

'Oh, Tibby and Rachel are exceptions,' said Teddy with expansive generosity.

'They'll be relieved to hear it. What's caused all this then?'

'Three guesses,' said Teddy. 'Works for _The Chronicle,_ talks a mile a minute, more energy than your average puppy and less idea what to do with it and enough moods to make a cat look positively placid. No, I _definitely_ never asked for sisters.'

'In that case,' said Geordie, as Teddy came to a full stop, 'I can safely conclude that now is entirely the wrong moment to ask what your feelings are on the subject of minding the gremlins for an evening?' Teddy's face lit up with new-found enthusiasm.

'Not at all,' he said, rocking onto the balls of his feet. 'It's the ones that are big enough to _reason_ I take exception to at the present moment.'

'I so hate to point this out,' said Geordie mildly, 'but Davy and the little boys have just discovered reasoning….'

'That's not the same thing at all,' said Teddy hastily. ''Sides, boys I know. When do you need me for?'

'This evening too soon for you?' asked Geordie, and then, when Teddy verily beamed, had to bottle his amusement.

'Not at all. Kitty can see no one burgles the house.'

'If she's not out pursuing a lead,' said Geordie, and watched as Teddy considered hurtling his filed report on the Cressey case at his superior's head. Manfully, he settled for handing it over like a civilized person, inquiring in the process, 'Doc going with you, is he?'

Geordie nodded. 'That was the idea. Thought we could all do with light relief.'

'What's this?' asked Jem coming into the office and catching only the tail end of the conversation. Geordie reached into his pocket and extended a set of tickets. 'For you and the others. As promised, no High Executioners.'

Jem, looking dubiously at the tickets said, 'I suppose this time you'll be there to explain, will you?'

'Can't, I'm afraid,' said Geordie, and rushing on before Teddy could do more than open his mouth, 'Gremlins are unwell again. Croup, I think. But I thought you were all due a night off after your trial by fire here lately.'

Jem still looked dubious. Teddy began to say, 'But, sir, I thought –'

'Quite right,' said Geordie, curtailing his sergeant. 'Must get on with the business at hand. What have you got for me, Teddy?'

And so the day passed away in a slow, somnolent blur of filed reports and signed death certificates, and release papers. At noon Jem slipped out of the station house the better to pass the tickets on to Faith that she might summon the others. He caught Kitty flying out the door, her hat askew and hair in tangles. She caught at his elbow and demanded a quote he didn't have for her about the Henderson case, because it was for the station house to give statements, not him, and no, as she launched herself pell-mell in that direction, that was _not_ her cue to go harangue them.

'You might have saved your breath to cool your porridge over that one,' said Faith, appearing in the doorway, eyes laughing at the retreating spectacle of Kitty, her unbuttoned coat flapping in the wind. 'What have you brought me?'

Jem handed over the tickets. And though Faith raised both eyebrows suspiciously at their stamp – _Yeomen of the Guard,_ by messers Gilbert and Sullivan –she also smiled and said, 'Thank Geordie for me. It will be good to get out,' and spared a kiss for Jem's forehead, leaving him to conclude there were worse things than an evening's entertainment.

* * *

'There's something wrong with me,' murmured Jem to Faith as the interval fell.

'Oh?'

'I think I'm starting to like it.'

Faith raised both eyebrows quizzically and made a show of touching a hand to the back of his neck.

'Hm,' she said, 'definitely a bad sign. Luckily, it's not contagious. I don't think _. I_ still think the whole thing complete lunacy.' She looked appealingly at Mara and Shirley for confirmation, and found to her satisfaction that they were nodding.

'I think you really have to worry when you can make sense of it,' said Shirley. 'Anyone want to have a stab at that? Ariel, you know theatre. Enlighten us?'

'On the plot?' said Mara, shaking her head, 'I wouldn't dream of it. It's so thin as to be window-dressing for the music. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.'

' _I_ have,' said a crisp voice as it collided with Jem's chest. Jem, who had been half-turned to Faith, now looked up and ahead of him abruptly, and blinked several times rapidly in his confusion. He was face-to-face, or near enough, with a small, angular woman, whose pointed chin and field mouse coloured hair should have made her nondescript. Gloved to the elbow, and in a high-collared dress in pastel colour and of old-world style, she evoked nothing so much as one of the Swallowgate shepherdesses. Jem would have apologised and forgotten her entirely had she not been towered over by silver-haired man with a back like a poker Jem would have known anywhere.

'I thought your gremlins were under croup,' said Jem to Geordie.

'Are they?' said she of the pointed chin. Notwithstanding the uncanny angle at which this left her neck, a look was more than sufficient for a bystander to gauge the mixture of amusement and surprise that darted across her face.

'You'll be Judith, I presume,' said Jem, offering her his disengaged hand. 'Do forgive me. My attention was elsewhere.

She laughed, a silvery, harp-like glissando and accepted the hand Jem offered her. 'Quite,' she said. 'The other half of the Young Adventurers, as was in pre-gremlin days. You'll be Jem, Faith, Shirley and Mara too, I should think.' She rattled their names off in a voice like Waterford crystal, indicating each of them as she went with a gloved hand. It was more than a little disconcerting. Seemingly sensing this, she said, 'I've heard rather a lot about you. Detectives make for rather good sketchers of character.' Then looking upwards again at Geordie she reiterated, wide-eyed, 'our Gremlins have croup?'

Faith was trying, with minimal success, to supress her laughter. So, from the twitch at the corner of her mouth, was Mara.

'I didn't want to be in the _way_ ,' said Geordie, as if this should have been obvious, scuffing a polished shoe against the foyer carpet. 'Thought they'd have a nicer time without us underfoot.'

'We wouldn't have minded,' said Jem. _He_ , Faith couldn't help but notice, was making _no_ attempt to cover up his amusement. He had the Blythe smile on his face and a devilish twinkle in both eyes, as though he were laughing at the world as much as his superior. But then Faith wasn't at all sure Jem wouldn't charm down off a goose if it came to the point. Geordie was saying, 'You've got to say that.'

'Have I?' said Jem, simultaneously as Shirley said, ' _I_ haven't, and we wouldn't have done.'

'I told you so,' said Judith, with a terrier-like shake of her shoulders. 'I _told_ you to simply ask them. It's what normal people do. Come on,' this as she took Faith and Mara's hands in hers and gently disengaged them from the others, tugged them forward into the foyer. 'If they don't talk shop they're going to talk music, and while I don't mind going –it makes for a rare night without gremlins and murder –that doesn't mean I've a _taste_ for it.'

'Don't say that,' said Faith, 'that casts a very dim view on my chances of acquiring one.'

Behind them Geordie was making noises of distress and Jem was heard to say, 'Well, if that doesn't make for a terrifying spectacle, I don't know what does.'

They laughed. Faith felt unaccountably that she had always known Judith of the pointed chin as she navigated them through the crush of people with their drinks and the bright, brassy interval music, chatting comfortably about everything from murder cases ('I thought they'd never get to the root of that Henderson case, did you ever suspect…'), to previous productions ('Did you see _The Mikado_? You must have thought it strange –starting like that without any warning…'), to the hazards of police life ('though,' to Faith, 'you're discovering what that's like yourself. How do you find it?'). She struck Faith as entirely too bright to be dancing attendance on assorted gremlins everlastingly. But then, there was no accounting for the caprices of the universe. The girl that had ridden a pig through the Glen would have laughed in the face of anyone who told her she would someday be attending Redmond's medical school with aspiration towards becoming a doctor, Faith felt sure. And while she might have wanted to see the world, she hadn't planned on seeing it…well, not like that, anyway.

'Geordie said something about Ottawa,' said Faith now, because it was neutral, and she was curious in spite of herself.

'Yes, that's right,' said Judith, 'I grew up there. We met there, in fact. He would have been a constable in training. It was raining, and I was rushing to hale a tram on the way back from the shops. Everything fell out of the basket of course. He held an umbrella over the lot while I reassembled it and signalled the next tram that passed.' Abruptly she stopped, the Waterford crystal sound of her voice fracturing as she offered Faith and Mara an apologetic smile. 'Sorry,' she said, 'you can't possibly want to know all that. Older people's stories always make for such dull rehashing –or I remember thinking so.'

'On the contrary,' said Faith. 'Geordie's never going to tell us, after all, however many of my haphazard suppers he sits through.'

That won another string of glissandi from Judith, bright and golden in the lamplight of the foyer. 'All right,' she said, 'but you must return the favour. I can't tell you how long I've been hearing _talk_ of you lot. The interest is far from one-sided.'

Promises were made and laughter shared; around them the air thrummed with myriad conversations and imperfectly rendered snatches of music, much of it from the first act, almost all of it flat or tuneless, some of it both.

As a bell summoned them back for the second half, curtailing the conversation prematurely, the men emerged from some sequestered corner to lead them back to their seats, and Judith turned to Geordie and said as she reclaimed his elbow, 'Have them come up with us. There's space in our row. No one ever wants to see _Yeomen_. It's so very…'but apparently there were words insufficient for the describing of this particular operetta with accuracy.

'I think Geordie's words earlier were _utterly bizarre_ ,' said Jem, helpfully. Faith hummed approval of this sentiment. Mara said, 'That sounds about right,' and the others laughed. No one protested the invitation. Faith was under the distinct impression that to embark on an argument with Judith Carlisle was a waste of breath unless one had a water-tight case. Mara could maybe hold her own, Faith thought, with a memory of the territory wars over the Swallowgate kitchen, but she thought herself well out of it. Besides, if there was enlightenment to be had on the tangle of the plot, who was she to decline the offer?

* * *

The remaining hour and a half passed in pleasant surrealism as the production went on punctuated by Geordie's stray titbits of trivia. 'They're trying for grand opera,' of course,' he whispered as the sinister prison guard – _what_ was his name –cornered Phoebe into a marriage. Still later, 'You'll notice they bring back _I have a Song to Sing, O,_ here. That's because…' Judith's offerings were more enlightening. 'That's Leonard,' she said of an officer perambulating the stage. 'Not Fairfax, not that you'd know it to look at him.. It's the start of one of the more convoluted plans this duo has conjured. Elsie's about to mistake him, watch.' They did, and sure enough the identity of the tenor was misconstrued. In due course Judith murmured, 'Now the plan is this…'deftly unravelling the madcap plan of the narrative moment.

'Did they throw sentences down the stairs and see where they landed to come up with these, or what?' asked Mara, on hearing this explanation.

Judith only shook her head. 'I think you might have something there,' she said, as characters took their place on stage for a wedding. The orchestra swelled, the chorus sang, and somewhere in the gaiety Jack Point, jester, emerged with a poison bottle and a minor key and proceeded to die at the feet of his sweetheart. Faith was reasonably sure weirder things had been conceived of, but she was having a hard time remembering what they were.

The curtain, fell, rose, another bow from the cast. Geordie was explaining how atypical the staging was. 'Point doesn't usually die on stage. More ambiguity, that way, you see.' Someone threw a spray of roses to the leading lady, who took them, clutched them to her chest and duly collapsed.

'Is that –usual, do we think?' whispered Judith to Faith.

'No,' said Geordie and Mara together from either side of her.

'No,' said Geordie, as he and Jem both rose, 'I rather think –' But it was no good. They were still picking their way over ankles and down aisles when the woman who had sung Phoebe was heard to say in tones more shrill than theatrical, 'she's _dead_.'

'I was afraid of that,' said Geordie darkly to Jem. 'Right under our noses, too. How do you explain it?'

'I don't,' said Jem. 'You might let me have a look at the body first.'

Behind them Judith had risen in her turn and was now deftly dodging her way through the crush of people. 'I'll telephone Teddy,' she said crisply over the hubbub of alarmed theatre-goers.

'Yes, tell him to bring Benwick and secure the exits. No one,' this in dangerous tones to the general assembly, 'Is to leave this building. Is that understood? Police orders.'

There were mingled cries of horror, indignation and outrage as people had turned for the exits.

'Hasn't Teddy got your gremlins?' asked Jem of Geordie.

'Yes,' said Geordie succinctly, before venting his feelings in swearing. Judith, now enmeshed in the surge of people flooding the aisle, had stopped on hearing this information, and now stood poised as a cat ready to pounce, awaiting further instruction.

'Ring Kitty,' said Faith, from where she still sat stranded in their row. 'She's not far away at Larkrise, and a known quantity.' Judith nodded, and set off, gloved elbows extended the better to cut through the throng. Geordie watched her go, reluctant, then turning to Jem said, 'Right, well, you'd better go and take a look at the body. I'm stuck here, obviously, at the door, until Teddy and Benwick can put in an appearance. What I _ought_ to be doing is finding out who had access to what when.'

'That's easy,' said Mara with an unconcern that made them jump. 'Give me leave to go find the relevant people, will you?'

'By all means,' said Geordie, gratefully.

Mara went, and left together Faith offered Shirley a smile and said, 'I suppose that leaves us to sit about like lemmings, does it?'

'Go on,' said Shirley with a laugh, 'be useful.'

Faith hesitated not at all. She found Jem bent over the body of the woman, roses still in hand, the thorns stuck well deep into her chest. 'Now then,' Jem was saying as she approached, 'let's remove those, shall we?' Gingerly, and with hand firmly wrapped in a handkerchief, he extracted the roses. They left little red pinpricks behind them that stood like a fine spray of geranium petals across the exposed neck of the actress. 'Evidence you know. Never did care for them much. The smell, or something. It's cloying.' He essayed a cautious sniff of the bouquet in question, scrunched his nose and shook his head. 'No, definitely not to my taste. Were they yours? Ah –Faith!' Jem haled her with an upraised hand and a look of immense gratitude. 'Could do with a second opinion. What do you think?'

'Difficult to say,' said Faith, making a circle of the body. 'Laceration to the suprasternal notch you've noticed already. There's not a lot else to see in this light. Any chance of moving her?'

Jem hummed far back in his throat. 'Ideally she ought to go back to the surgery. I can't run tests like this, neither of us can. And its…undignified.' He shrugged, helplessly.

'Quite,' said Faith. She watched as Jem began to make a tour of the body, turning over wrists, folding back sleeves, gingerly lifting and inspecting ankles. Carefully he turned the head from side to side. There was nothing to see, only the dappling of the rose thorns.

'Her heart, do you think?' said Faith. 'Or perhaps a stroke? There must be someone to ask.'

'Hm,' said Jem. He had moved on from the unblemished neck and was now gingerly exploring the woman's face. 'Not my provenance, that. No jaundicing, or anything to indicate…ah, now that is interesting. You see here?'

He had eased the mouth open and now gestured at a cluster of reddish spots.

'I thought rubella presented white?' said Faith, peering with interest at the inside of the woman's mouth.

'It does,' said Jem, nodding agreement. 'That's what's interesting. Those aren't German Measles –those are Petechiae. She's been poisoned.'

* * *

'I take it you've ruled out natural causes then, Doctor?' said Geordie's voice from behind them, making Jem and Faith jump.

'Definitely,' said Jem. He got to his feet, brushing the dust from his knees in the process. To Geordie he said, 'I can't tell you what with though. Any chance of getting some of this stuff to the surgery?'

'We're working on it. Teddy's come with reinforcements. I've stuck them on the door to guard this lot,' nodding in the general direction of their fellow theatre-attendees, 'and I'm going to take him into the wings to have a look 'round. Care to come?'

'Well, it's got to be better than being penned in here. Any idea where you're going?'

'No,' said Geordie, 'but I've thought of that.'

Leaving Faith to hover protectively over the body they went, lead by the supporting actress–a Miss Lotte Langham – as she chattered at them, rattling off the gossip of the hour. No, not many people had liked Miss Harington, she was difficult to get on with, and that was a fact. And of course, they knew all about how she'd got her start. No? Well…and off went Miss Langham into the dubious rise to grandeur of Miss Eve Harington.

'You, er, didn't care for her then?' said Teddy. 'Only the manager was saying you'd worked rather closely with her for years.'

'Oh,' said Miss Langham, 'no, _I_ got on all right with her. We'd been in school together you know. That sort of forges a bond between you…well, I felt that it did. That probably sounds very silly.' Geordie huffed a breath in spite of himself, strongly suggestive of their having wandered from the matter at hand. Now he attempted to regain it.

'You were saying,' he said, 'that others found her difficult?'

Miss Langham wasn't sure she'd say _quite_ that. Though some _did_ say Eve –that was Miss Harington –was very particular. Some even said particular to the point of impossibility. Not that _she_ had said it, the inspector understood, only that she had _heard_ …'Quite,' said Geordie peremptorily. Would Miss Langham elaborate?

It was akin to unstopping a tap, Jem thought. Off went Miss Langham at full pelt, all the myriad rituals and quirks of her friend. Take the sandwiches for instance…and so it went on, a persistent drone, as of bees, though Jem reckoned even bees would have been hard pressed to keep up this level of monotonous hum. Some of it, no doubt, was useful. He could practically see Geordie sifting the information for relevance. Now, at the dressing room door, he said, 'Tell me about the sandwiches. I understand she asked some be sent up.'

'Oh, well, _those_ weren't anything much. Only what she always had. _I_ think,' this conspiratorially, 'the theatre was really quite put out about that. Only paste, you see –she never has –had, I mean –an appetite for anything else. They _did_ offer. Kept offering, in fact. Lewis had to be quite firm.'

'Lewis?' said Teddy, his pencil pausing.

'Oh,' with a flourish, 'that was the agent. Didn't I say?'

The look that passed between the three men was indicative of this pertinent detail having been omitted. Geordie made further inquiries as to the present whereabouts of Lewis while Teddy negotiated around Miss Langham and into the dressing room, Jem at his heels.

There was little enough to see. It was a small room, heavily smelling of talcum and perfume. It was the sickly, cloying kind of scent and brought back memories of the experimental scents the girls had used to make back in Rainbow Valley days, submerging orange segments in water, or drowning lilies of the valley in carbolic lotion to no very good effect. Odd, Jem thought, considering the raptures everyone had seemed to be in at the interval over the actress. Wouldn't she have worn something more –well, more. Superior. Jem shrugged, supposed he didn't know much about the subject of women's scents beyond the bottle Faith favoured when she could remember to daub it behind her ears, and continued his circuit of the room. The dressing table caught his attention with its combined clutter and faintly fishy smell. He must have scrunched up his nose, because Teddy said helpfully, 'That'll be the sandwiches, Doc. Just there.' He waved a hand in their vicinity.

Jem picked up a sandwich and sniffed at it experimentally.

'Careful, Doc,' said Teddy, twitching nervously. But Jem had set the sandwich quarter down and was now examining another.

'These are meant to be…?' he looked inquiringly at Miss Langham. Daintily she stepped into the room and came towards them in mincing steps, feet pointed elaborately –also needlessly, in Jem's book, since the performance was well over.

'Meat paste, Doctor. the one you're holding. Those,' gesturing at what looked to Jem to be identical triangles of bread, 'are crab paste. Nothing too _heavy_ you know.'

Jem's eyebrows rose. He dipped a finger in the meat paste and touched it to his lips. 'Not to worry, Teddy,' he said soothingly, catching sight of his nervous twitching out of the corner of one eye, 'there's not enough here to put in your eye.' He set the sandwich down and gingerly sampled the crab paste.

'You're _sure_ they're different?'

'Oh yes, Doctor. I made them up myself.' Beside him, Jem could practically feel Geordie's eyes narrowing. 'Well they taste the same,' said Jem, nonplussed. 'I defy anyone to tell the difference. You try, sir.'

'Er,' said Geordie, 'I think I take Teddy's side –and your word –on this one.'

'Not to be unhelpful,' came Mara's voice from the doorway, 'but I can't imagine she'd have tasted the difference anyway, even if they were packed full with stichnine.'

'Oh no,' said Jem, ' _that_ you'd taste. Makes quinine taste sweet.'

'Maybe, but you've never tried eating the stuff on an empty stomach before a performance. You've no mind for anything but what's about to happen.'

'You'd know, of course,' said Jem resigned. 'I was forgetting. Right, so what _would_ she have noticed?'

Geordie, meanwhile, was veritably bristling with irritation at the interruption. That Mara registered it was evident because she now said, 'Faith's wanting to know if she can take things to the surgery now Benwick and the rest are here. She says it will help narrow down the cause. She'd have asked, but she didn't know the way.'

'Of course,' said Geordie deflating at once. 'Miss Langham, that will be all for the moment. If you could wait…Benwick will find you somewhere to wait.' Then, returning his attention to Mara, 'Tell Faith we're still working on getting her things to test. And if we're not back in ten minutes, come back and give us a Who's Who on this lot, can you? I'm not at all sure I trust Miss Langham further than I can throw her.'

The look that swept over Mara's face suggested this wasn't a bad start, as primers went, but it was only a moment, and then she was departing, her voice drifting back down the corridor to them, 'I'll have Judith ring Kitty and tell her we'll all be a while, shall I?'

'Please,' said Geordie, before giving the dressing-room door a judicious kick closed.

'Purely as a point of interest,' he said as he rootled among the dressing table clutter, 'are your family connected to any non-interfering women?'

'Not particularly, no,' said Jem, proffering the Blythe grin. 'At the present moment though, I'd say that's just as well.' He picked up a partially eaten sandwich in crab paste and wrapped it in his handkerchief. Then, deftly extracting Teddy's from his coat pocket, he did the same with the meat paste, belatedly saying, 'Forgive me, Teddy –may I?'

'Of course,' said Teddy. 'Only –well, I thought you said the stuff _wasn't_ in the sandwiches.'

'I don't think it is,' agreed Jem. 'Thoroughness, Teddy, never killed anyone. Besides, it will stop Faith going mad for lack of things to do.' This close the meat paste smelled unpleasantly tinny. Jem could still feel trace amounts of it against his teeth, metallic and slightly gritty. No, he didn't think Eve Harington had died of the stuff, but he found it nigh on impossible to believe this was anyone's food of choice –the fussy Miss Harrington least of all.

* * *

'So much for an evening without murder,' said Faith, when Jem and the others had departed. 'I take it,' this to Judith, 'this isn't exactly standard procedure?'

'Hardly,' said Judith and offered her a smile. 'that's why I forgive it the absurdity, you know, of all this.' She gestured at the stage with its elaborate curtain and gilded scenery. 'Even the gremlins don't quite take his mind off the work as much as…'a shrug and a another gesture around the auditorium sufficed to finish the sentence. Judith had begun, Faith noticed, to fold intricate creases into her program and it appeared to have taken on the majority of her attention. They fell silent, bar an ornate timepiece overhead, whose ticking the orchestra had previously succeeded in drowning out. Every now and again Judith's shoulders repeated the terrier-like shake they had given earlier –Faith was starting to understand it as a habit –and under her fingers the program was beginning to look decidedly like a waterlily.

'You'd like to join them, wouldn't you?' said Faith, and Judith laughed.

'Spare a thought for poor Teddy,' Judith said, 'he'd never know where to look if I insisted on joining ranks.' She finished with the waterlily and added as an afterthought, 'anyway, I haven't done it in years.'

'The Young Adventurers?' ventured Mara, and Judith laughed. 'Ages ago,' she said, recovering. 'That was how we started –I never did get on that tram. I went with Geordie instead to interview a suspect. The height of irregularity.'

'All your idea, I shouldn't wonder,' said Mara, and they, all of them, laughed, the sound of it a counterpoint to the clock, now tolling the hour.

'Naturally. In those days Geordie did everything by the book. You should have heard the row that ensued as he tried to talk me out of going. In the end, I had to tell him it was on my way home.'

'It wasn't, of course,' said Faith, and grinned.

'It was three miles out of my way if it was anything,' said Judith reminiscently. 'But how was he to know? He'd only stopped with the umbrella while I reassembled the fish basket and had been landed with an opinionated young Miss with a taste for adventure in the process. Anyway, he couldn't complain. It was a woman, the suspect, and it was their third attempt at getting her to talk. I walked in, put the kettle on and had the whole thing out of her in minutes.'

Shirley, joining in for the first time, offered her the Blythe grin in his turn said, 'I take it the station house was incensed?'

'Oh, they had to be. Letting an outsider meddle in police procedure and all that –but they couldn't argue results.'

At this juncture Jem reappeared, smelling strongly of sandwich paste. This was accounted for by his extraction of a selection of the same from his pocket and handing them to Faith with instructions to see if she couldn't parse the contents.

'Gladly,' said Faith. 'I take it I can leave?'

'Er, no,' said Jem with apology. 'I've drawn up a list. If you could give it to Benwick or one of his ilk and send them down to the surgery, you can make a start presently. One of your people –' this with a nod of acknowledgement to Mara, 'has given us a room upstairs to sort things out in. It's not ideal, but…'he shrugged.

Faith nodded sympathy. 'It's not the stage floor. This is a mess. Why in God's name can't Teddy or someone escort the body to your surgery?'

Judith's eyes flashed with warmth. She said, 'You're much better off not trying to be logical about it. Rather like operetta that way, precincts' Due Process. They must observe it, even if that means the police surgeon conducts bloodwork and what have you in an upstairs dressing room to imperfect effect because no one is allowed off the premises.'

'Indoctrinating the lot of them, are you, my sweet?' asked Geordie, appearing behind Jem, tall and imposing in the bright light of the auditorium. With light flooding the stage it was a far cry from the world they had been transported to –had it really been only a half hour ago? He bent, kissed the top of Judith's head and said with affection, 'Leave due procedure alone a moment and tell me –' At this junction he was interrupted by a scuffle in the vicinity of the theatre door as a man forcibly breached it, and Constable Benwick's exasperated cry of 'Sir! _Sir!_ You can't do that!' before jogging off after him. Geordie, Jem, and Teddy followed. Shirley appeared to consider it, then thought better of the idea.

'Dare we hope that's sorted it?' asked Mara.

'Much too neat, if it were,' said Judith. 'Though I _hope_ it has. What are Kitty's sentiments on gremlins, do we know?'

Faith laughed. 'She's only an older version of a gremlin herself. They're probably having a grand time.'

'Well, as long as someone is.'

Then Geordie was back, Teddy and Jem breathless behind him. Constable Benwick had collapsed against the doorway, one hand plastered to his side. Faith raised two inquiring eyebrows. 'Only a stitch,' Jem said. 'He'll do fine.'

'You were saying,' said Judith, looking upwards at Geordie, much as if nothing had happened to interrupt the conversation. Geordie's forehead creased in concentration, as he searched for the answer to this inquiry. Finding it, he brightened and said, 'Perfume. The one your sister wears. The little one. Miriam? 'What's it called?'

'Lily of the Valley, darling,' said Judith. She had seemed to fade at the mention of her sister, but it was over quickly, her voice rippling now with obvious amusement. 'Why?'

'It's all over the dressing room,' said Geordie.

'Yes, but that hardly signifies. Anyone might buy it – _I_ could afford it in my secretary days,' said Judith. Absently she handed him the waterlily-program, and Geordie tucked it into his pocket, humming as he did so. _Tower warders under orders..._

'It wasn't on the body,' said Jem, interrupting this display of marital harmony and abruptly curtailing Geordie's musical recitation.

' _What_?' said the others as one, Teddy inclusive. Faith nodded her seconding of this fact.

'It's not on the vanity either –you must have seen that, Teddy. Miss Harington obviously didn't wear it. Naturally that raises the slight question of who –'

'Oh, if that's all,' said Mara, 'that's no great thing. Lotte Langham's worn it for years –everyone knows that. But she might have been in there for any reason at all.'

'Such as?' Geordie wanted to know.

'Hair, make-up, pins at the back of a gown,' said Mara enumerating the multiplicity of reasons on her fingers as she went. It depends how close they were, really. You know she fetched those sandwiches.'

Geordie nodded to Teddy and said, 'Bring Miss Langham upstairs, would you?'

'Yes, of course, sir,' said Teddy. Faith rose. She gestured at the sandwiches still wrapped in handkerchiefs and laying incongruously on the purple velveteen of her skirt. 'I'll see what I can do about these, shall I? Is Benwick recovered?'

'Just here, ma'am,' said Benwick, stepping nervously out of the shadows. 'I brought the things the Doctor asked for. I could show you…?' He looked from floor to his Inspector to Jem, before settling on the floor. He decidedly _wouldn't_ look at Faith.

'Please, Benwick, if you would,' said Jem. 'I'll be with the others, if they'll bear with me?' Geordie nodded. 'I'd rather like your expertise too, if you don't mind lending it,' he said, turning to Mara.

'Of course.'

'I suppose I'd only confuse the proceedings,' said Judith. Geordie appeared to consider this. 'I don't recall that deterring you in the past.'

'Oh well, if it's for a case,' said Judith, 'I _do_ know when to step back.'

That got a laugh from Geordie, warm and deep. He said, 'My sweet, there appears to have been a murder under my nose. I rather think the more brains we have on this one, the better. And procedure can go to the blazes.'

'Good,' said Jem as he heard this. 'Then my corpse can –'

'Stay upstairs, certainly,' said Geordie. 'There are limits. The deuce of a time I'd have explaining that one to the Chief. Judith in an interview though –well, I don't see which of us is likely to let it slip. Especially as I'm better liked here than in the old place.'

* * *

Benwick had assembled the surgery equipment to the best of his ability on a long trestle table. It was too low to work at comfortably, but it was higher than a vanity and Faith couldn't think of a better alternative under the circumstances. She spread a sheet of paper over the table, shed her gloves, and rinsing her hands in a basin, began systematically to deconstruct the sandwiches. This close the smell of the paste was overwhelming. She could all but taste it against her soft pallet, and more than once Faith found herself holding her breath as she worked. It could be worse, she thought. Jem had had to contend with them mixed with lily of the valley. A less palatable combination was hard to imagine.

She eased a piece of meat paste onto a slide and under the microscope, grimacing at the sight it made. 'Why,' she murmured, 'anyone would eat this…But Jem was right about this mess. It's disgusting, but not fatal.'

* * *

There being nothing else to do, Faith went with this information towards the impromptu interview room, grateful for the smells of musty brocade and floor polish that hung in the hallway, almost refreshing after the pungent smell of the sandwiches. A glance through the glass panelling of the door suggested no one was having much luck with the subject under questioning. Mara sat in the far corner, ankles crossed and folded far back under her chair, her head tilted to one side as she followed the conversation of the others, absorbing more than contributing to it. Whereas Judith was perched at Geordie's elbow, animatedly debating the finer points of something, while Teddy scribbled notes that looked unreadable, and Jem leaned against the table, thoughtful. Cautiously Faith knocked on the glass. Recognising it, Jem, whirled round, crossed the room and said as he opened the door, 'Any luck?'

Faith shook her head. 'Mind you,' she said, 'do we still have the flowers? I can look them over, too, if you like.'

'Marvellous. I'll come with you.'

'There were flowers?' asked Judith, interested. 'Do we know who they were from? Miss Lagham, perhaps you saw…'

And then Jem was outside, threading an arm through Faith's and shaking his head, Mara at his heels.

'Unless you've an idea how to go to find those flowers?' she said. Jem shook his head. Then he laughed. He threaded Faith's arm through his, and said to Mara as she slipped ahead of them, 'Geordie wanted to know earlier if any of you girls who pinned hopes were non-interferring. But I'm not sure he has room to talk. I've met Dachshunds down badger sets less tenacious than Judith Carlisle.'

They reached the dressing room, still heavily perfumed with lily of the valley and sandwich paste, but the roses decidedly absent. 'Teddy left them on the dresser,' said Jem. 'I'd swear to it.' Constable Benwick, summoned, said the same. He further swore that he had touched nothing, but had left it as Teddy and the Doctor had done. 'Thought you might need to come back,' he said, and shrugged.

'Right,' said Jem, 'well someone obviously shared that thought. Fancy a guess?'

The constable appeared to consider this for a long moment. 'There was that man as tried to bolt, Doctor,' he said after a long moment.

Jem nodded, then shook his head. 'We'd have seen the flowers,' he said, and looked at the women for confirmation. 'Wouldn't we?'

'They were too bulky to conceal,' said Faith in agreement.

Anyway,' this from Mara, 'they've a bite too them –all the thorns. You wouldn't _want_ to be holding them close.'

Teddy found them, not long afterwards, crushed among a recess in the foyer, someone's clumsy attempt, he supposed, to get rid of them.

'Not our bolter,' he added. 'I've checked his hands. Not a scratch on them.'

'And he wasn't wearing gloves?' Jem wanted to know. Geordie was still quizzing the cast, ably assisted by Judith. Faith meanwhile, had started work on the roses, Jem peering interestedly over her shoulder to offer input on her progress.

Teddy scratched his head as he reached for words to clarify this point. 'He…didn't seem the type to.'

'Right, well, someone obviously spared a thought for them,' said Jem. 'Because none of our captives has as yet reported a second body.'

Teddy's eyes went wide. 'You mean it was the _roses_?' he asked, incredulous.

'Definitely the roses,' said Faith, looking up from her work. 'Or I don't know chemistry. What do you make of this, Jem?' She held the result of a test she had run on the stalks –very much gloved.

'Bloody hell,' said Jem, forgetting not only the mental note he had been making to replace Faith's dark evening gloves -now unwearable - but also his company, and sending a startled Teddy into peals of laughter. 'No wonder it only took those scratches across her chest to do her in. What is that?'

Faith's eyebrows, already raised, now vanished into her hairline as she said, 'I thought _you_ were offering a second opinion. _I_ certainly don't know.'

'Of course,' said Jem. 'Bloody lethal, from the look of things. Benwick never found anything further, I take it?'

'We went over the place with a toothcomb, Doc,' said Teddy.

Jem, placed a reassuring hand on Teddy's shoulder and giving it an affectionate squeeze. 'Fine, that's fine. Shall we see how Geordie's getting on?'

* * *

The company in the makeshift interview room appeared to be having more success.

The air was heavy with tension as Jem traversed the space. He bent to impart the information of the roses to Geordie, and Judith said brightly, 'Miss Langham's been telling us how proficient she was at chemistry back in schooldays, haven't you?' Jem caught the flash of her teeth, white and small in the light, and looked to the doorway to see if the others had caught it too. _How_ , he wondered, had his first impression of this woman been of a shepherdess? He'd seen Geordie interview any number of people since starting at the station house but he'd never seen him enjoy it –Judith relished it. Aptly named, apparently. Hadn't Faith told him a story years ago about a Judith that made for an avenging angel? She'd done it decked in finery too, unless his memory misgave him.

'Chemistry, was it?' he said now. 'That's very interesting, you know. We've just been having a look at those flowers you gave Miss Langham –it _was_ you that threw them to her, I take it? –and you'd need a solid grasp of the science to tamper with them the way they had been.'

'But _why_ ,' said Miss Langham, 'would I do that? Didn't I _say_ we got on?'

'Well, yes,' said Teddy, 'but we can't find anyone who will vouch for it.'

'And then,' said Geordie, extending a hand and lifting one of Miss Langham's long-fingered ones in his own, 'there are these.' He rapped his fingers smartly against the gloves. Miss Langham laughed. 'Part of the costume,' she said. 'Phoebe –'

'Doesn't wear them,' said Geordie. ' _Elsie_ though, she does. That's what all this is about, isn't it? You felt you had the wrong part.'

'Of course I did! I had!' Gone was the chatty tone of earlier, even of moments ago. It seemed the woman before them crackled like ice. 'I was always the better actress –the theatre school knew it! Do you know, she almost failed her audition? She thought they spent hours and hours debating a scholarship, but I _knew_ –I'd heard them debating letting her in!'

Teddy came and put a hand on her shoulder. 'Come along,' he said. 'I think we'd better go where we can write this up properly.'

With difficulty, he and Benwick manoeuvred her out of the room. The puzzle solved, Jem felt the easing of the atmosphere as everyone took a collective breath.

'Here's to the Young Adventurers,' said Geordie, raising a hand in salute. 'We'd never have thought to ask about school. What made you think of it?'

Judith shook her head. 'She kept going _on_ about it, I suppose. Now, who has the time? I owe Kitty a reprieve, and we both,' with a nod at Geordie, 'owe the rest of you an evening without mayhem. He did promise, after all. I make out there's just enough time to run to something normal before tomorrow starts.'

To this end they retired to the Carlisle house, where they were met by a flustered Kitty and gremlins who climbed all over their mother with giddy cries of ' _Eema!_ You were _ages_ and _ages!_ ' until she carried them off to bed. Kitty cornered the others and grilled them in terrifying fashion, pen poised, all the while rocking on the balls of her feet. 'Can I have a quote for the paper? What about a statement? Have you caught the person who did it? With roses? Really? How did you –'

Mara found the kitchen, and as the gremlin's evening rituals floated down to them like gossamer, she put the kettle on, Geordie hunted out cards, and Jem pressed Kitty into an overstuffed armchair with the promise she would have her scoop if she would only, please to goodness, sit down and play a hand of bridge like a normal person. The air was heavy with the cedar log smell of the house, and the tea brewing, and gilded with the squeals of the gremlins as they were hushed to sleep. Judith reappeared, and cards and teacups went eight-hands round, and it was plain from the look of them, that no one could imagine being anywhere else –even if it had been a night to remember.


	10. Mallo in an Apple Tree

_This one's for Kslchen, who I unwittingly caused acute distress to earlier. Mea Maxima Culpa. And for Formerly Known As J, who was good enough to polish my Latin for me. Also proof that I still remember what a normative chapter length is for screen reading. And evidence I can be prompt about updates. Sometimes. In spite of Design Shows that muck my week about. Look, I have lots of writing composition time then. Oh, and this may or may not be a testament to what happens when you grow up reading Iona and Peter Opie..._

 _Finally, if the last Nan/Jerry chapter was the 'Have His Carcass' instalment, this is the 'Gaudy Night' one in household parlance. If you know your Sayers, you'll know why._

* * *

The calendar said it was spring. On Una's almanac calendar the spring equinox had long since been dotted red to mark its passing. Jerry had watched her do it while quizzing her on the virtues of assorted fountain-pen nibs and which would be preferable to a writer between visits to Avonlea. But they had had a long winter, and Avonlea was still blanketed in fine, downy drifts of snow. There was enough of it that the train was declassified due to weather, a circumstance that back at White Sands he had not understood, but was beginning to understand now. All that flyaway snow, and the wind rattling down the line meant that all told it was difficult to see much beyond vast expanses of white, punctured occasionally by whirls of green Jerry took for pine trees. So much for spring. Nan assured him that in the right weather the countryside was awash in variegated greens, and pinking cherry blossoms, brassy yellow daffodils flanking the rails, but he had yet to see it. And he hadn't written to say he was coming, either. Should he have done, Jerry wondered uneasily now? Ever one for fine distinctions, every past visit had been duly marked in curliqued writing on Nan's own calendar –he'd seen that too. Marked again by Milly Keith, though she had jotted the days in pencil, he recalled, finding it awkward to use a fountain pen against the wall and determined to keep ink out of her pastry.

The train came abruptly to a halt and he craned his neck in an effort to see _some_ thing out the window. If he squinted he could just pick out the station. They had stopped short of it –why? At least it was blessedly quiet. He could bear that. No clanging bells or wailing bagpipes to set his teeth on edge and make him remember. Only white silence like dew, downy and deep.

After what seemed an interminable interval an apologetic conductor appeared to explain that a horse appeared to have slipped its tether and was now stood on the line until word could be sent to the station to see about having it moved. Jerry nodded sympathy and rubbed his hands against the back of his neck for warmth, before trying them on his stomach. It was freezing in the little third-class carriage and he supposed he'd be there for some time yet. All told, little Bruce was going to be thoroughly unimpressed by any recapitulation of this journey that Jerry brought back to him.

A cloud passed over the sun and sent the snow slipping uneasily into massy shadow, the pines stretched taut in the sudden gloom. Then there as a hiss, and a rattle and the little train lurched forward again. If nothing else, he would be in Avonlea this side of evening, and that was beginning to feel like no small accomplishment.

He tried the schoolhouse first, and found it empty, though the key was easily enough discernible, tucked into a jam jar behind a planter, presently vacant. An old Ingleside trick, that. Briefly Jerry considered going in and waiting. It would get him out of the cold, and the little yellow-stone affair certainly _looked_ warmer than his present environs. He squinted through the windows and the imperfectly drawn lace netting; in the half-light he could just make out the shape of the sitting room beyond his reflection. There was the fireplace with its yellow flags and afterthought of a mantle, a pot of ivy it looked as though Nan had nursed through the winter, her favourite of the Lynde quilts draped haphazardly over the sofa-back and a book balancing precariously on the sofa-arm, it's leather bookmark slightly off-kilter, as if it had been inserted in haste. He strained his neck to make out the spine, but no luck. He spent a further five minutes entertaining himself with guesses at its title; not worn enough for _Persuasion_ , the wrong size for any of her _Lady Molly_ , the wrong colour for _The Well-Beloved_ , or indeed any of her folio Hardy.

He did better with the notebook spread open on the coffee table, his gift of the slim-nibbed, gold-plated pen nestled in its spine as hand in glove. That would be one of her Lord Harrington adventures, Jerry was sure; they had positively taken wing in the years since she had graduated Redmond, no longer whimsical economies but ambitious narratives that stepped wilfully on the toes of conventional mystery. Content with this conclusion he turned from the warmth of the house and went in search of Nan.

He found her at the school. It was so obvious Jerry wondered how it hadn't been his first thought, early afternoon on a Wednesday. She was taken up with the arduous affair of ramming Latin down recalcitrant throats and so missed his appearance, which suited Jerry. He leaned against the shadowed part of the doorframe, the cold of the cloakroom negligible after the train, and gloried quietly in watching her. From the sound of it, she was having almost as much of a slog as the train had had getting to Bright River. Presently what Jerry could only suppose was a Sloane was chanting:

 _Latin is a dead tongue,  
_ _Dead as it can be!  
_ _First it killed the Romans,  
_ _Now it's killing me!_

It was obviously a fairly routine occurrence, because all Nan said on the subject, and that mildly, was 'As you're so keen on your Latin, Anthony, would you remind the rest of us what the participle parts of a verb are?'

Anthony appeared to consider this, then ducked his head –the better to hide a grin, Jerry thought –and began,

 _Detention, detention, detention,  
_ _I've forgotten my Latin declension…_

'Yes but Anthony, it's nouns you decline, not verbs,' still mildly. Jerry wondered Nan didn't shake him. He was only an onlooker and seriously considering it. _Pye_ , he wondered, _or Sloane_? Or was there some other Avonlea family worse than either? Whatever his family name, the boy was unrepentant. He wasn't even trying to stifle his grin as he launched into a poem Jerry had all but forgotten, though he remembered well enough that Jem had been keen on it.

 _Amo, amas, I love a lass,  
_ _As a cedar tall and slender…_

'Right,' said Nan, curtailing this recitation early, 'I'll put you down as being Against, on the subject of The Value of Latin, shall I, Anthony? Anyone want to argue For?'

Around the room sobs of laughter died in throats and eyes went wide in mixtures that ran from confusion and dismay to alarm, panic, and entertainment. It was vastly apparent this was a tried and tested technique. The room had gone much too still for real surprise. 'No one?' said Nan. 'Well, shall _I_ argue for it in that case?'

'But Miss,' said the boy called Anthony in tones of horror, 'Miss, that's not fair! You know _everything_.'

'Not nearly so much as I'd like to,' said Nan. 'Shall you begin?'

It was not a long-lived debate, much to Jerry's dismay, and it ended in Anthony's imperfect recitation of participle parts of verbs. They segued from Latin grammar to English poetry to general groaning all round.

'But Miss, _must_ we,' darted in syncopation around the classroom.

'You really must,' said Nan to the blackboard she was writing on. Her handwriting was improbably large on it, to Jerry's mind. He'd expected the dainty, curlicued script that decorated her letters, but of course no one could have read it at a distance. They were midway through _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ when the bell went. At least half the room bolted at once, books half-packed or slung carelessly under arms. They jostled past Jerry in their haste for their coats, while the others fussily packed away exercise books, texts, and hunted treasures from their desk that they didn't trust to the school overnight. One or two stopped by Nan's desk for a word, and then eeled quietly away, leaving her free.

He came into the room relatively noiselessly after the mad clamour that had been the children. Nan was clapping eraser brushes out the window, their dust improbably haloing her like a patron saint of Demoralised Latin Scholars everywhere, and when she turned she dropped them in a clatter. Then she was running towards him, deftly dodging desks, her arms coming around his neck with a fierceness and surety like bindweed.

'I thought you were the inspector,' she said, laughing. Jerry felt the origin of it somewhere in her diaphragm from the closeness of her. She was spackled with the chalk dust still, and he had to turn his head away to sneeze as it tried to invade the territory of his nose.

'You don't think,' he said, looking over her shoulder towards the window, 'we hadn't better wait pleasantries until later?'

'We can give them things to talk about properly later. I'd have let them go early if I'd realized. Anthony Pye would have been thrilled.'

'He was _discipuli_ …my cases are slipping. Unruly student, anyway?'

'That's the one. Let me think, what would he say if you asked,

 _Mallo I would rather be,  
_ _Mallo in an apple tree_ –'

 _'Mallo than a naughty boy,  
_ _Mallo in adversity'_

Finished Jerry, and laughed, they both did. 'That I _do_ remember.'

'So will Anthony, _in secula seculorum_. It's why I don't grudge him the rhymes. Often they're the best way to learn a thing, even the outlandish ones. And even the school board can't fight that logic, because I have Isaac Watts _Divine and Moral Songs_ on my side.'

She had let him go in favour of retrieving her coat, and Jerry felt the cold of her absence where she had nestled, her head at the crook of his elbow, arms at his waist, the peculiar mix of apple blossom, chalk and wood smoke sharp still in his nose. Now she held out an arm to him and Jerry wove it through his. He let her lead the way. They wandered down a lane covered in cherry trees not quite brave enough to blossom yet, though along the ground the occasional iris had ventured forth, offering little arrows of colour along the boarder. Daffodils too, in clusters, their cups full of snow.

At some point Nan turned and Jerry found himself in a mixed wood, the kind where blue spruce knocked shoulders with oak and birch with cedar, their roots twisted round each other like sheets on a boat. The snow was less there, whether from the shelter of the trees or the fact that they were on a well-trammelled path was hard to say. But the air was full of the smoky smell of cedar and the green smell of flowering grass when Jerry said, 'You do admirably with your Pyes and Sloanes, considering.'

'I can negotiate Pyes and Sloanes.'

'Yes, but you shouldn't have to,' said Jerry. Nan laughed, and darting up on her toes kissed his nose where it was red with cold.

'The world doesn't work like that,' she said lightly.

'Well it should.'

'You wouldn't enjoy it if it did. Neither of us would. _Too much sweetness rapidly cloys_ and all that.'

'I don't know, I expect we'd find things enough to do,' said Jerry.

'So do I. That's not what I mean.'

'It's not quite what I meant either,' said Jerry, and smiled. 'I mean, that too, of course. But I was thinking more –well, what would you do, if you could do anything in the world?'

'I'd give you the end of a red piece of thread,' said Nan, here eyes flashing the Blythe gleam, devilish, and merry –and absolutely bewitching by the wintery sunlight –all at once. Jerry shook his head, only partially to clear it. 'You always were better at Greek, angel. Translate that for me?'

'As if I have to,' said Nan. For a moment her right hand emerged from its glove, ink-dappled fingers flashing in the sun-dappling before staging a tactical retreat to shell-stitched wool. 'I'd write, of course,' she said, and Jerry couldn't help but be awed by the conviction of her, the way she seemed to fill and shimmer with it there in the woods, the smell of the snow sharp, and the scent of well-crushed needles like incense on the air. 'Not my economies, you know, but full-blooded narratives about real people, who do real things…and I suppose the murders would be part of it, they've got to be a sort of habit with Lord Harrington, et al, but they wouldn't be the point. They'd be _good_ , Jerry, and beloved of people…but in the meantime, I can make do with Sloanes and Pyes, and Latin lesson plans. Look, I can bear slings and arrows from the world with you beside me. It was when you _weren't_ it was awful.'

Abruptly Nan sat down among the melting snowdrifts, tugging Jerry with her. Nearer the ground the earthy smell of mouldering leaves, needles, and wet earth was thicker than ever, and musky in a way that made him think of the cathedrals and churches he had sometimes wandered into on leave days during the war, so much so that the old prayer came unbidden into his head, _Oh God, keep her safe, keep them all safe_. He turned to look at her, the picture she made with the muddied snow either side of her and her feet tucked under her knees for warmth, her skirt wrapped even tighter around her knees to the same end. There was a tree at her back, but of course there was. _Apple,_ thought Jerry, looking up at the crown. But too early for blossoms –or too cold? He wove an arm around Nan's shoulder and drew her head onto his chest. She smelled of apple blossom, of chalk and now of the woodsiness of their surroundings, the hair that had escaped her cadogan knot going lightly static against the wool of his coat. She was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, and looked radiant.

Without warning she said, 'It wasn't just the school, you know.'

'Hm?' said Jerry, tilting his head so that he looked down at her.

'You asked…back in Kingsport… if it was only the school that made me say I couldn't come back. It wasn't only the school.'

'I know, angel.'

'No, I don't know that you do. I told Faith. I ought to have said to you. It was where I was when the war was on. When you were wounded, _twice_ , Jerry, and you went back. I think of Kingsport, and I think of Swallowgate, how safe and happy and _loved_ we all were…but I think of the hours sewing too. Of spinning until my fingers were raw and bleeding, all so you wouldn't die of pneumonia –between bloody injuries as it turned out. And I think of the war, and the way we ran for the door –how hungry for news Faith and Mara and I were, how void and empty Swallowgate felt without Faith in it. Jerry, I loved it, and I wouldn't trade those years for anything, or the people in them, but I couldn't –I can't go back.'

'Of course not,' he said, smoothing the static of her hair. 'Never mind, darling.'

The snow seeped generously around them as they settled, dappling coats, clinging to gloves, even finding its way onto the brim of Nan's hat. Gently Jerry brushed it off, mindful of the precariously poised arrangement of flowers. They were real this visit, not the felt would-be marigolds of January. Where had she found them?

'Now,' he said, resettling her hat in place, 'let me see if I can do better than Mr. Pye for Latin conjugations.'

'Well that's no great effort,' said Nan with a smile, but Jerry was hardly listening. 'First present, that's _amo_ , isn't it? _I love_?' As if in answer he kissed the brim of the hat, a sleek brown cloche trimmed in red ribbon, a spray of brassy daffodils spilling over its brim. 'Then it would be _amavi_ –'

'You've missed the infinitive,' said Nan, but without rancour.

'Hush, you're spoiling my fun. I never said anything about participle parts. _Amavi_ –that's _I loved_ ,' with a flourish he removed the cloche and kissed her nose. 'Then we skip the imperfect because it suggests incompletion and is therefore irrelevant. That leaves _amabo_ –'

' _I will love_ ,' said Nan for him. 'Two can play at that you know. You'll understand better about the slings and arrows if I do. Let me see, _maneo_ ; _I wait_ Or remain, expect, endure…you can take your pick. _Manevi_ ; _I waited_ , because it _is_ finished now, you understand, _manebo_ –'

'No need for that one,' said Jerry, pressing a finger lightly to her lips. 'Not relevant, remember? I'm here now –no more waiting.'

'Really?' Nan tilted her head up the better to look at him, eyes lambent with cold and expectation. Perhaps it hadn't been strictly true, Jerry thought, what he'd said, about the waiting, but not matter, he'd set that right.

'Really. Partly why I came down.'

'And here I thought you were making good on a promise to see Avonlea in spring –or trying to.'

'That too,' said Jerry. 'I don't have to come by way of Ingleside to do that though.'

He might have jolted her with a stray piece of electricity, to judge from the way Nan came suddenly to attention, her back flush with the apple tree they were shaded by in a way that couldn't possibly be comfortable. All she said though was, 'Oh? How is Mums? And the others, too.'

'I didn't manage to talk with them,' said Jerry.

'No?'

'No,' said Jerry. 'I –' But there was no good way to say it. He was six inches deep in slurried snow and damp leaves at least, with no graceful way of extricating himself, certainly not in a way that wouldn't send her plummeting into the stuff, and made kneeling awkward at best. Taking her hands was out of the question; his own hands were mittened against cold, as were hers, and from the way they fell limp across her knees, Jerry suspected she had balled her hands into fists for warmth deep in the middle of them. No, he wouldn't make her uncurl her fingers and risk freezing, even for this. Somewhere overhead a cardinal burst into nervous chatter, its song stark against the cocoon of their silence. It was at least as thick and downy as the snow, although the snow for all its sins didn't feel like molasses the way the silence did.

In the end there was nothing for it but to shed his own mittens and scrabble in his coat pockets. In the shelter of the Haunted Wood, thick with ghosts and memories, the trees half in blossom and the ground blanketed in snow, the cold was less severe than on the open road, certainly than the train carriage had been. He wouldn't have known it from the chill of his mother's ring when his fingers came up against it, still icy from having absorbed so much of the weather. Such a little thing, Jerry thought, folding it into Nan's mittened hand. It winked there, a slender band of old-world gold and garnet against the shell stitch of her aunt's knitting, and though Jerry knew –had often pictured through the long years of the war –how well it would suit her, he found in the event that words were elusive. Overhead the cardinal finished its chorale and took flight, showering them in gems of melted snow. Nan hardly seemed to register them, though they settled on her hair and forehead like seed pearls. She sat as though transfixed, but for her eyes darting between him and the full-blooded gleam of the garnet Jerry would have supposed she had been. He ought to say something. How he had wanted to do the thing properly –or as close as could be managed – to give her the ceremony and occasion Susan was determined to have.

Instead of which, he bowed his head in submission, touched a chilled finger to the rich amber of the garnet, and said, ' _Placetne, magistra_?'

' _Placet_.'

* * *

 _*Officially I don't think 'Mallo' is an honest-to-goodness Latin-inspired rhyme. The Opies don't list it. The only record of it's existence is in Benjamin Britten's opera. I am 90% certain that it was invented for Turn of the Screw. The thing is, Britten set it to such a convincing melody that it sounds like an honest-to-goodness rhyme. So for the purposes of this universe, 'Mallo' really is a rhyme. And yes, that mattered enough I had to mention it._

 _** And in case you didn't fall in love with Lord Peter growing up (or didn't read Latin for seven years, or maybe just forgot declensions and conjugations), here's a note on the Latin at the end. It means approximately 'Does it please you, mistress?' But the important bit is the -ne. It implies an expected affirmative. Jerry knows exactly what Nan's going to say when she answers, or he thinks he does._


	11. Candles for Witness

_As ever, love, gratitude and thanks to all of you reviewing. I've got one or two guests I've been remiss in answering, so forgive me making it up here._

 _I think one of you expressed regret at Faith effectively taking over the Jem role for this generation, and I'd honestly never thought of it like that. They're such a pair, these two, that to me they always tackle things together, whether its murder or pneumonia. In an case, I'm glad to hear the way I'm writing them is making up for the usurpation -and thank you for giving me something new to think about with these two._

 _In other news, I count it entirely too long since we had one of Nan's letters..._

* * *

'Two spades,' said Jem, placing two cards down on the table. 'At least, I think two spades. Where were we at?'

It was the closest Larkrise had ever come, in Faith's recollection, to a normal evening. Teddy and Kitty were gently bickering over the finer points of something by the fire –the rules of chess, from the look of it, and Mara was curled up in the lionshead chair absorbed in the script of the moment. Shirley was at her feet, no surprise in that really, occasionally trying to inject sense into the quagmire that was the fireside chess game. Neither Teddy nor Kitty appeared to be listening. Now he said, 'You're at three spades. That's not the same thing at all.'

'Isn't it?' said Jem. He looked at Faith, who said, 'I've lost count I'm afraid.'

'Judith led with One heart,' said Mara, apparently to her copy of _The Devil's Disciple_. 'And Faith said two clubs. That will be where you've gone wrong.'

'Right,' said Jem. 'Three spades it is.'

'Pass,' said Geordie. 'Unless, of course,' with a smile in the general direction of the others, 'the commentary has an opinion.'

'No,' said Mara.

'None whatever,' said Shirley, and to Teddy, 'You can't do that, you're in check.'

'Am I?' said Teddy.

'Really?' said Kitty. Faith wasn't sure which of them looked more surprised. Shirley went to show them and Judith proceeded to claim a trick, punctuated by squeals form the gremlins, who had made a blanket fort of the spindly legged table in the face of their mother's protestations, Faith's tolerance, and Teddy and Kitty's obvious amusement.

'That puts us ahead,' said Judith to Faith over the gremlin's merriment. Faith, squinting at her hand, said, 'Rather more your doing than mine. Where are we now?'

'Four diamonds,' said Judith.

A weight settling against the back of Faith's chair declared Mara had officially despaired of her mastering the game in the foreseeable future. ' _here_ , _a charaid_ ,' she said, her voice warm with amusement, plucking the relevant cards out of Faith's hand. 'I don't understand how you never played at this growing up.'

'In a Presbyterian Manse?' said Faith, tilting her head backward the better to catch Mara's eye, and laughing. 'Dangerously close to gambling. I don't understand how you _have_.'

'I never pretended to Presbyterianism. You'll forgive me if I don't quite see the connection'

'The bidding, I think. Tell you what,' handing Mara the remainder of her cards, 'as you know what you're doing –'

'Oh, you're going to learn Elsie for me, are you?' said Mara, eyebrows raised, even as she took Faith's place. Then, with interest, 'What did you _do_ of an evening?'

Jem said, 'We had Rainbow Valley.'

'Not when it rained,' said Shirley, similarly despairing of the fireside chess as a lost cause and actively extracting Jem's cards from his hand. 'You're not really telling me it was only Rilla and I that got pressed into making fours with Miss Cornelia and Mother Susan?'

'I really am,' said Jem. Deftly he scrambled out of the chair. 'Yours, and welcome,' he said, and grinned. 'I leave you to sort the lot out.'

'Pass,' said Shirley, unfazed.

Geordie said, 'Ever helpful, that,' as the gremlins wearied of their blanket fort and burst from it with mad cries of, "Teddy, Teddy, play Circus!'

'I suppose,' said Judith, 'it was a matter of time before the attraction of blanketed citadels wore thin.'

'Oh, I don't mind,' said Teddy, now on four knees and gamely suffering the little girls to clamber onto his back, while the eldest boy waved his arms in what Faith took to be imitation of a Ringmaster.

'I give you young Jem,' said Faith in Kitty's ear, joining her by the fire and nodding at this display, while Kitty dissolved into fits of laughter, cause indeterminate. So much for a normal evening then.

* * *

Into this disarray came Di, hurtling like a dervish mid-whirl. 'You'll _never_ guess,' she said. She was clutching a letter in one hand, crunched, crushed and generally much-abused from her running with it, her hair a fiery streamer against her ears. She threw herself into a chair rendered vacant by the fall of the Fort of Blanket, and capitulation of Mount Spindly Legged Table, asking as she did so, 'Have you _heard_?'

The fact that a game of bridge was ongoing, the Carlisle gremlins running riot and Kitty halfway to mild hysteria was apparently insufficient evidence on which to base an answer.

'No, what's that? Have they changed their mind about prohibition then?' This from Jem, who appeared to have mistaken the letter for a paper.

At this suggestion, Kitty snapped back to attention, toppling the chess set in an attempt to seize hold of pen and paper. Finding none she extracted a pencil from a pocket and held it poised over a napkin plucked from under her saucer. Jem, almost unthinking, tore a sheet out of the notebook he used to write up examination notes when on crime scenes and handed it to her.

'Nothing so official sounding,' said Di. 'I meant from Nan.' She brandished the letter, which rustled between her fingers, 'I thought you must have had one too.'

All the time Teddy continued to parade the gremlins between lionshead and wingback chair, his young Ringmaster inexhaustible. Jem, heretofore focused on parsing the tricks in play at the coffee table, now whirled a red head round with interest. The others too stopped what they were doing to listen –only the gremlins went on shrieking giddily. 'What have the Pyes and Sloanes done now?' he asked, crossing his arms and bracing his back against the sofa to listen.

'Nothing. It's Nan –she and Jerry are married.'

There was a thud as Jem collided with an end table, occasioning a squeal from Kitty, laughter from the gremlins and an exclamation from Teddy.

'You all right Doc?'

'Dazed,' said Jem. 'You sure you read that letter right? Catkin's handwriting can be pretty elaborate in spots.'

'No,' said Di, 'definitely not. Here you are,' and she held out the battered letter to Faith as the others flocked around her to read it.

 _By the time you read this, we shall probably be on the boat crossing to Quebec, Kippewa region if you want details. I'm writing to you from the Ingleside garret, where we are staying in the meantime. Jerry has had it half-arranged for months, though it's only fallen into place now. But I'd better start at the beginning._

 _You knew of course, about Jerry and I laying up plans to visit in the New Year -this would have been about Christmastime, though obviously nothing came of it afterwards, what with me doubling back to Kingsport at first warning. I think I'd told you too, that we put that right after the summons Faith gave me. He must have been more in Avonlea than Kingsport in the run-up to Spring this year, the way Aunt Milly reckons it, and you know how particular her records are. I'd have wondered about it, but as he was closing with the university, I don't suppose it was so urgent that he be present all of the time._

 _What I won't have got to telling you is that he came down as the children's half term was starting, thinking I'd be more at leisure to visit then. I was, but I don't know that my not having class came into it much._

 _You'll forgive me if I don't tell you all the details, they're still too new and too much ours, I think, to part with. Remind me years from now, and I'll tell all, I promise –and you'll laugh over it, almost certainly not understanding. So much Ancient History, you'll say, and not nearly enough romantic pieces –but they are, darling, or at least, they are in the tradition of Jerry and me. Suffice it to say we had another one of our long, discursive talks and Jerry is now on much better acquaintance with the Haunted Wood than previously._

 _We came back by way of the old Manse, which is how the rest happened –honestly, it was the furthest thing from planned you can imagine. The old Manse, of course, was home to Mums's Allans, and would have gone to the new minister, I think if the Secretariat hadn't opted to inspect it during the recent interregnum and found it awash in damp. How the Allans hadn't died of living in the place I really don't know. It's still gorgeous to look at from the outside though, a wonderful old ruin of a building well worthy of Mrs Radcliffe, all trailing ivy and riotous morning-glories, though this time of year they were only so many gnarled and twisted stalks. Ruin or not, it still adjoins the church, and fairly shocked Jerry, I think with its upkeep._

 _'_ _To think people thought_ _our_ _Manse was a shambles,' he said, eyes laughing, when he saw it. Naturally I explained about how we'd tried and failed to sell it between ministers, and how consequently it was now sitting there, vacant until we could transform it into a mission house or something._

 _'_ _One of your secret places, is it,' said Jerry, and that made me laugh, because it is, even if it was never one of Mums's. I've often gone there to write, largely because the little Keiths know to look for me everywhere else –well, it comes of having Mums for an aunt, doesn't it? I told Jerry all this as we took a turn around the garden, wading through the ivy and the long grass –it was more like that garden in Marvel's 'Nymph Complaining' than ever this time of year, all overgrown wilderness, and more than a few creepers snared our ankles. It was the most natural thing on earth to go from haunting its garden to exploring the church. Someone was inside polishing silver, or something, because the windows were all lighted up from the outside, and even backwards they had one of Christ sending the disciples out into the world that piqued Jerry's interest. He collects images of that particular scene, always has –but you know this._

 _The plan – such as it was – had been to wander through the church, converse with the windows and then go back to the schoolhouse. And we did go in. The air was pregnant with that damp-stone-and-dust fragrance so particular to churches, and the chairs were askew from what I presume was the monthly Session meeting, and the odd hymnal and psalter slantwise on its wicker cushion. I straightened them as we went, which made Jerry laugh, and that in turn caught the attention of Rev. Moore, who was up at the front taking a survey of the communion cups, and I realised, seeing him, that Session had met earlier that evening, and we'd come in on the heels of it. No wonder the chairs were askew. (Incidentally, after all those years of basting and sewing I can't see those dainty chalices without thinking how like thimbles they look. But Jerry swears there is no theological relevance to the thimble –what do you think? We debated it all the way back to Ingleside –but I'll come to that.)_

 _I also realised, as we began talking, that he must have been on his way to closing the church up for the evening._

 _'_ _Don't let's wait,' said Jerry, and Di, we'd had so much of waiting –well you remember. You walked the floor nights with me at Swallowgate and told me it would be worth it, would come out right. I'd ask if you remember but I'm tolerably sure you're as unlikely to forget as I am. I didn't argue the point. I might have done under different circumstances, I think, if for instance it weren't the start of the half-term with time enough to find someone to fill my place, but it was, and I didn't. Di, I_ _couldn't. Or at any rate, not much. _

_I wrote a letter to the school and we came away to the Glen._ _This would be when we debated the issue of thimbles and their theological weight, or lack thereof. I think we quite perplexed the poor couple opposite us. Naturally our setting out late in the evening meant we arrived at the Glen at some ungodly hour. To say we startled everyone, they were all very good about it, Mums especially. Her eyes Di, they looked like great grey morning stars._

 _The others were all much too preoccupied with cobbling together an eleventh-hour wedding to give the hour much notice. It was an understated service, much what you would expect for an unanticipated Friday evening wedding, and so dark by then that there weren't even the clouds for witness, though there were certainly enough candles on that score. Rosemary had thought to ring up for Ingleside, which meant the house came down -accounting for how Mums came to be there - right down to Susan with her opinions on candles and their theology. I don't have one, as it happens, and I certainly wasn't much preoccupied with coming up with one at the time. The smell of wax was mixing with the charcoal smell of the fire, and the combination was not unlike the damp-church smell that had struck me earlier. Rev Meredith tried —and almost managed —to read the verse about 'Watch, therefore, for ye know not the hour' with a straight face. At the last he laughed, and it was infectious._ _I was still in my school best, which is smart enough –it has to be when the board is run by Sloanes –but hardly what little Rilla would have called a wedding-dress, I think, and still with chalk on the sleeves and collar, I'm sure. Jerry had been travelling all day, trains and carts and all sorts, so was imperfectly smart in his own right –but I wouldn't trade it for anything._

 _We came away afterwards to Ingleside to celebrate, Susan having stockpiled chelsea buns and an elaborate cake in light of the upcoming Ladies Aid. She can still give them the cake, as no one ate it. Mums pulled me into a hug as Susan fussed around us and said_ _'_ _I'm almost sorry you waited to come to us. I should rather have liked the account you'd have told. Y_ _ou_ _darling, wouldn't have scrimped on details, unlike some people who shall not be mentioned but insist on tormenting their Mums's imagination by only feeding her morsels via telegram. But you're_ _here_ _, so you can tell me how you came to think of it.'_

 _For the next hour or so we did, Jerry and I talking over and around each other under the watchful eye of Gog and Magog while Susan quietly despaired for our sanity and tried to foist tea and Chelsea buns on us –as if we any of us had any appetite._

 _Jims, had, if the rest of us hadn't. He's up at Ingleside until Mrs. Anderson is delivered of her baby, and I can't tell who is more delighted, Rilla, Susan, Dad, or Jims himself. He ran between the lot of us with giddy abandon, scattering crumbs like rice before us, cheeks rosy with exhaustion. I'm sure we'd have taken more trouble to arrive at a timely hour if we'd known he was there._

 _You can imagine the time we had of it trying to get them to listen. Jims was drunk on sleeplessness and Chelsea buns, Rilla was wildly overexcited because wasn't it like something out of a storybook, Mother was in one of her giddy castles-in-the-air and adding ever so many furbelows to it, and Susan just kept handing those buns round in the vane hope that on the nth appearance someone other than Jims would do more than break one in pieces._

 _Dad sat there shaking his head, not quite believing. His eyes were warm and laughing, as he grinned at Rilla –you'll know the look I mean, what Mums calls a 'pure Blythe Smile' –and said with mock severity, 'I am_ _determined_ _to attend your wedding, in case there's any doubt on the point. Which is to say I will turn up in person, sit in a pew somewhere, and_ _observe_ _the service. It will be a daylight affair, with music and dancing. I'll listen very nicely to the vows and solemnly to the sermon. And afterwards I shall wave you away into the future. You could maybe pass the same on to Di.'_

 _Well now I have, and saved Spider the effort. I should also add that he followed that speech up with the concession that, of course, 'This was rather nice too.'_

 _He really needn't worry, Rilla's quite determined on a wedding that_ _is_ _a wedding. She took me hostage yesterday afternoon to show me the plans, and Di, the charts and the seating maps and the battles over menus –no wonder our military operations took so long to take effect. Their best strategist was raising a war baby in Glen St Mary!_

 _Susan, of course, is horrified. Not so much by the evening wedding and candles –all very Roman, she thinks, though_ _I_ _think that begs the question of what the very Presbyterian Session was doing with them at little Holy Trinity in Avonlea by that logic –but by the whole painting expedition. Susan, as you know, likes people to do the sort of things that allow her to pin down their accomplishments and hymn them._

 _'_ _Painting!' she keeps saying as if Jerry has suddenly declared for Palagianism (in which, by the by, I've always seen sense), 'but how will they_ _live_ _?!'_

 _Together, is the answer to that. It would be churlish to say I'm glad there won't be any more eleventh-hour calls to me about essays that won't write, so I won't. I_ _am_ _glad but not so much over that. It's a detail, like antimacassars, and also like antimacassars, its superfluous. Jerry is lighter than I can remember him, even before the war, and that's worth it. If we want for anything, well, I can still conjure economies. I'm well-practiced by now. Besides, I'd so much rather this to anything else in the world._

 _If I don't manage to write to her, tell Faith thank you for that summons she gave me –I don't think she'll quite realise the good she did there. Mouse, I know, always fancied her an Emma Woodhouse in old days, but I can tell her now she's much more Benson's Lucia._ _Her_ _schemes always came off._

 _With love,_

 _Nan_

 _P.S. Tell Mara from me I second the recommendation of the unceremonious marriage –I have a feeling she's inching ever nearer to adopting it as a matter of course anyway, between the McNeilly and Baker wrangling. I'd write and endorse it properly but I haven't time without making us late –and as Faith used to say in letters, 'This will only go all-hands round.'_

By the end Jem was shaking his head, much as Faith suppose Dr Blythe must have been, the Blythe smile with its mixture of puckish mischief and merriment was stamped plainly across his face, lest Kitty should have been in any doubt as to what exactly this looked like. Mara was laughing.

'They sound happy,' Jem said now, 'I'm glad.'

From where he was kneeling awkwardly entangled in gremlin limbs, Teddy's eyebrows darted together and he said, 'You thought they weren't?'

'I don't know what I thought,' said Jem. 'They had a right set-to back in January. Not exactly what you meant, I think, when you sent for Catkin.' This last to Faith, who shook her head, golden curls bobbing gaily against her shoulders.

'No, but then you know what they're like.'

Mara hummed assent. She said, 'Much too wise to woo peaceably, always have been, by your account.'

Faith agreed that they were, Judith relieved Teddy of little Tibby and bundled her onto her lap, and the hall door swung open again, a voice calling out from afar, 'You'll have heard, of course?'

'Yes,' said the sitting room party, even as Faith's eyebrows shot upwards in confusion.

She said, 'Surely that's not Una,' but in stubborn contradiction of this negative, appeared Una, flushed with exertion, little wisps of hair fighting valiantly to escape the plait at her back. 'Have you heard?' again, her voice silvery with excitement.

Faith said, 'Isn't it great news?'

'Oh, that too –hardly a surprise though.'

'You think not? We were just saying the opposite.'

By then Una was in the lounge with them, and able to take stock of the tableau they made; Teddy mired in Gremlins, Faith, letter in hand, and Kitty at the fire, the four at the coffee table, Jem still with one hand rubbing the sore spot on his head. Di was perched precariously on the edge of the sofa, delighted at _something_.

'Not at all, you've been saying for years,' here earnestly indicating Faith with a nod, 'that something like it would happen –and I think we're talking about different things.' Without asking permission she plucked the letter out of Faith's hands and replaced it with a section of newspaper, on which was stamped the headline _The Hatpin Murder_.

Jem groaned. 'If she's written it up,' he began darkly, but never got to finish. From her place at the coffee table Mara clucked her tongue in disapproval and said, 'Have you _ever_ known Catkin for a reporter?'

'First time for everything,' said Jem, but then he came and peered over Faith's shoulder the better to squint at the newsprint. They all did, bar Teddy, still at the mercy of the gremlins.

 _The bench was set with Easter lilies; the smell conjured a church. They looked, the snowed petals, like delicate and bloodless fingers, outstretched to the jury._

 _The judge was snowed too; wig starched and with the air of a man who had cheated death successfully at least once. He spoke with a voice like parchment, the passiontide crimson of his robe in sharp contrast to the white of the lilies. He had sat for three days in the airless courtroom, and looked utterly unaffected by it._

 _He shuffled a brace of paper and turned to address the jury. He never looked at the prisoner, or seemed even to think of her, though she looked at him, wide brown eyes fixed on him as a grouse stares at a cat and knows its doom. He looked at the jury and still he did not speak. The air was heavy with unspent words. They waited_...*

'She's written one of them up!' said Di, voice rising to gremlin-worthy decibels in her excitement. 'Did _you_ know, Ariel?'

'How could I have done? _You're_ the one forever at the paper –we ought to be asking you. Here, _a leannan_ , let's not do that, shall we?' 'This last was addressed at the remaining of the Carlisle girls, whose fingers had been exploring the dubious territory of Teddy's eyes. Fluidly Mara swooped her up off the ground and up into her lap, where she settled, content to prod instead at the smocking of Mara's bodice.

Judith said, 'You've done that before.'

'The peril of having older sisters with children,' said Mara. Jem was still making a study of the newsprint. 'This isn't all of it,' he said now, frowning. 'It stops just after the _dramatis personae_ are all set up.

'I think they call that _serializing_ ,' said Di wryly, with a look at Kitty for confirmation. Kitty bobbed her cap of black curls.

'It's good,' she said, her words faintly breathless with awe. 'News I can do, but this…' and she shook her head, sending her curls swinging again.

'Nan's stories are always good,' said Faith.

'She's written herself into it,' said Jem, 'or I'm a Dutchman. That description of the writer character in the dock –Miss Spark –that's Nan to the life.'

'Oh, she's been part of the Lord Harrington mythology for ages,' said Faith, laughing, 'hasn't she, Ariel, Di?'

'Mm,' came hums of ascent from around the room. 'She used to say she meant for Harrington to marry her, do you remember –but that she couldn't see the way to get them there. I suppose she's found it now.'

'That's right,' said Di, 'she used to say they were as stubborn as each other, Harrington and Selena Spark –and she wasn't wrong –but didn't we tease her for it. _Not like anyone we know_ , we were always saying.'

' _You_ were,' said Mara, 'Mouse and I had to take your word for it. Though,' as if making a great concession, 'I fairly take your point on that score now.'

They fell silent, Una perusing the letter, Faith and the others rereading what there was of the Hatpin Murder to reread. Laughter from Una's quarter brought Faith's head up prematurely. 'What's the joke?'

'Oh, about your Mouse casting you as Emma.'

Mara, disengaging small Rachel's hands from where they threatened to undo vital buttons, folded a small, plump hand into hers and said, 'I'm not all that convinced Mouse was wrong, whatever Catkin says.'

'The way I remember it,' said Di, 'it was as much you and Faith together as not.'

Gentle clucks of dissent came from the others, even as Judith said, 'Why can I picture that?'

'Not together,' said Faith. 'You took over once I'd departed for Europe, or am I wrong Ariel?'

'No, that's right. Though I should like to know which of us she's seeing as Elizabeth to your Lucia.'

'Oh, none of you, surely,' said Jem. 'You get on too well, the lot of you.'

Una's eyebrows rose very far up her forehead. 'You've read them?'

'And risk getting left behind by these three?' said Jem, and smiling the Blythe grin at Una, 'of course I've read them. What _I_ want to know,' his attention back on the bridge party, 'is whether she's right about that postscript. Because I still say the Patterson street people will be delighted to help.'

' _Don't,'_ said Mara and Shirley together. 'We're very near taking you up on that one, I think.' This from Shirley.

Di laughed. 'And there's your answer to that,' she said. 'I didn't think Alastair meant it, when he said the other day at the paper.'

'What on earth,' said Mara, 'is he doing there? I could have sworn I left him building things.'

'Distinct hazard of siblings,' said Teddy. 'They don't stay put.'

'Di jabbed a finger at the paper and said, 'they're writing up some project of his. I've got landed with the photographs, naturally. It's not tea making, so I'm not arguing. Did you mean it just now, about seriously considering Nan's approach?'

'Let's leave it, shall we?' said Mara. 'You cannot possibly want to get into all of that.'

'Yes, we do,' said Kitty.

Geordie helpfully said, 'There are certainly worse ways of going about a marriage.' Notwithstanding the toddler in her arms, Judith leaned over and swatted her husband's elbow. 'This from the man I had to argue into disregarding pomp and circumstance.'

'I was trying,' said Geordie as one aggrieved, 'not to add to the already expansive list of my sins by certain persons' reckoning. That was decidedly different.'

'I'm not altogether sure it is,' said Judith, and tilted her head in inquiry towards Mara, now attempting to divert the ministrations of small Rachel to her hair. 'What's the latest grievance?'

'Oh, all the usual things, I shouldn't wonder,' said Mara, somehow achieving a shrug in spite of the gremlin affixed to her. 'The most recent mundanity to undergo contentious debate happens to be _where_. Mam won't count it outside the Halifax Cathedral, and I can't imagine Susan will count it, save at a Presbyterian church. I don't _think_ ,' here looking to Shirley, 'It need necessarily be the Glen?'

'There,' said Jem, 'you see? Patterson street's the ideal answer.'

Shirley, plucking the squirming Rachel out of Mara's arms, said, 'You're forgetting that bit in the letter about Dad wanting to attend at least one wedding.'

'There's always Rilla's,' said Di, while the others laughed, and Una tried to decide where to look.

'Give her here,' said Judith to Shirley, and bodily lifting her daughter across the table, still with another child tucked under one arm. Duly she handed Tibby off to Geordie and having thus settled her daughters said, said, 'Let me do it.'

There was appreciably several moments' silence in which the little party of Blythes and Merediths proceeded to process what had been said. Mara caught up first. 'You cannot _possibly_ want,' she said, 'to wrangle the current lot of quandaries.'

Judith shook her head. 'It's what I couldn't do for my sisters. Humour me?'

There was nothing anyone could say to this; for a moment Faith watched the two women argue the point mutely.

'Please,' said Mara, when what seemed a long moment had passed. 'If you would, that would be a help.'

Judith said, 'I'm afraid it rather complicates –' but got no further, for here Mara and Shirley both succumbed to laugher. 'If that's all,' said Mara, 'I rather think the damage was done on that score long before you intervened.'

* * *

* _With apologies to Dorothy Sayers. One or two of you may recognise Nan's writing here as a rather imperfect piece of homage to Strong Poison_. _Not for nothing did I give her Harrington a title all those eons ago in Pieces of Lives._


	12. Arrival in the Spring

_Well you would keep asking for this chapter, so here you are. Lots and lots of talk of Gremlins. You'll have to tell me how it reads. I am officially too close to it. To all of you reading and/or reviewing, thank you for coming along with me._

* * *

It was a season for revelations. So it emerged late one April afternoon. The tree buds were ripely yellow and green, the air perfumed with early irises and jocund daffodils. Along the path to Fox Corner came reports of jaunty black-eyed Susans and other low-growing botanical treasures that whispered of spring. The mud of March had hardened into dark black earth with its own particular musky richness, ideal for playing in if one was a gremlin.

At the Carlisle house the windows were thrown wide open, the better to bring the garden in and keep a tab on youthful merriment from that quarter, and in the rosebud chintx front room, the women were deconstructing christening gowns. That is, Mara and Judith were deconstructing them. Faith, having tried her hand at it, had rapidly concluded she was better at sutures than seam-ripping and now sat on the floor, a clutch of the afternoon post in her lap, sorting through it for news that would interest the others. Presently, she held up one bearing the Island postmark and said, 'Here's one from Mother Anne. She always writes a good letter.'

So saying she broke the seal and began to regale them with news of Ingleside.

 _Such news as we've had – and quite unexpected! Not, I suppose, that news of the expected kind is really news. But in any event, little Jims Anderson is back at Ingleside_. _Now, I know what you'll say, for he was up when Nan and Jerry were married too. But that was a temporary thing – this isn't_.

Here Faith broke off, incredulous. This was as well, as exclamations of surprise rippled around the little chintz sunroom, even from those whose only connection to Rilla was through the Blythe post, bouncing off the walls like echoes. Mara, rolling discarded thread into a ball, observed more to it than to Faith, 'But Jims must be what now, seven?'

'Let's have the rest of it,' said Judith. 'It might prove enlightening.'

 _Everyone is thrilled, of course. Ingleside loves Jims, even to its walls and floorboards, it always has. He follows Rilla about like a shadow, lest she disappear on him, and Susan has been baking batches of monkey-faces almost continually._

 _Gilbert, of course, says nothing, but the other day he closed up shop early and took little Jims out to fish among the ice melts. You can well imagine the spasms of maternal horror that occasioned from Susan and Rilla both. Susan was convinced he'd be drowned, and Rilla expressed a creeping discomfort that Morgan wouldn't approve. Though I can't help but notice she hasn't gone to her Morgan once since Jims came to us. She did ring up Miranda Milgrave to see if she had any of those eel-concoctions going spare, as you'll recall Jims was always partial to them where none of the rest of us was. (Were you here for that, darling? No matter, Nan must have written you an account of Jims and those eels – how Gilbert and I laughed – and how hard we tried not to with Rilla in the wings!) _

_Anyway, the fishing expedition ended with Jims in_ _the ice melts, justifying the spasms of horror and reminding me of nothing so much as my misadventure as Elaine – though I confess I always thought Nan would be the child to recreate that particular scrape._

 _Subsequently, he and I spent a rather lovely afternoon picnicking in Rainbow Valley. No danger of drowning, as you'll appreciate, and lots of woodsy-greeny fairy haunts. We had quite a charming time hunting them while I regaled him with my old flower-and-guardian stories ( not Avril, I assure you) and Paul Irving's creations. I haven't spent an afternoon ensconced so completely in fancy since little Walter outgrew our excursions together (Nan never quite gave them up, as you'll know) though Jims is rather more like little Jem at that age than anyone else. _

_Rilla has done nothing so extravagant with him. It's quite enough to sit on the edge of the tub and make soap snowmen on his little golden hair, or tuck him into bed. She doesn't say any more than your father on the subject, but from the way she revels in those mundane luxuries, I gather it's not only Jims that is afraid of the other vanishing._

'None of which,' said Faith, refolding the letter to gentle amusement, 'Advances us a whit on all things Jims.'

'No,' said Mara, 'but very like Mrs. Blythe -she writes the way she talks.'

'Susan too,' said Faith, picking up a letter. 'See if she's not a bit more enlightening.'

Susan was not. Her letter began, _You'll have heard, of course, that they're taking htat blessed babe to Toronto,_ so that Mara paused in her work enough to ask, 'Does she mean Jims or Rilla?'

'Both, I think,' said Faith, and went on to enumerate the Evils of City Life as detailed by Susan, starting with the traffic, lingering over the noise – _how they will ever sleep I do not know_ – and ending with the likelihood of their being burgled, or Jims kidnapped.

'It really shouldn't be funny,' said Judith, whose eyes were sparkling with tears of mirth, 'it's so well meant.'

Faith said, 'Yes, but that's Susan – wonderfully wholesome and prosy, and unexpectedly funny. We're still not a bit further ahead, you realise.'

'Is this Jims?' said Kitty, appearing without warning at the sun-room window. Equally without warning she set her hands on the sill and catapulted herself through it, dodging an occasion table and turquois lamp in the process with a gracefulness Faith at that age would have paid dearly for.

'I might be able to help with that.'

'Oh?' said Judith, smoothing out the remnants of the christening gown she had so lately unpicked.

'Di had a letter from her father about it. She seemed quite struck by it. Apparently it's got everyone what your Susan calls 'all catawumpus.'

'Well,' said Faith, 'it's certainly unexpected. What did Dr. Blythe say? I imagine his letter was more to the pertinent details.'

Kitty scrunched up her eyes in concentration and then said, 'It began with the Anderson baby, apparently.'

'Yes, that's right,' said Faith, 'Jims was up at Ingleside for the confinement.'

Kitty nodded, scrubbed diligently at her eyes as though the better to extract the details, and went on, 'Di said it went wrong. Something with an unsayable name.' Here her eyes all but closed in concentration as she reached for the details. Then triumphantly, 'Perpetual fever.' Around her three women winced as a collective.

' _Puerperal_ ,' said Faith and grimaced, as Mara said more abstractedly, 'Milk Fever.'

'I like that better,' said Kitty. 'I can _say_ that. Why does everything medical have to have so many letters?'

'One of life's everlasting perplexities, darling,' said Faith, and returned to hunting the letters. She thought it unlikely Dr. Blythe would have written the same letter twice, but there was a chance. She said as she sorted, 'Did Di say what became of the baby, or dare we ask?'

'It died, I think. Or maybe it was already dead?' Another collective wince. Kitty said, 'Is it very awful then, Perpe – Milk Fever?'

'Bad enough,' said Mara to her sewing. Judith nodded. Faith said, 'I worked with a nurse once who used to swear it's what came of lying in after a baby. I sometimes wonder if she wasn't right.'

'This was your Lili?' said Mara. Faith shook her head greyly and resumed her sorting. 'Someone else,' she said. 'One of the girls in England. I've lost her name now.'

Kitty, apparently registering the sewing for the first time, said excitably, 'Oh, my mother did that!'

'Really?' said Faith, diverted by the mention of Kitty's mother. She had quite forgotten Kitty had one – but of course she had. No one, not even Kitty, could have sprung into the world fully grown.

'Yes. Or maybe I mean her mother did that for her – or with her. For mother's wedding dress, to save on new fabric.'

'Oh,' said Faith, suddenly understanding. 'I hadn't put that together before.'

Judith laughed not unkindly, and Mara said, 'What on _earth_ did you think all this was towards, Parrot?'

'I don't think I did,' said Faith, laughing herself. Kitty meanwhile, had thought up a hundred and one questions that needed asking; had Mara thought of a pattern for it, what about a date, and where would it be? Would she be allowed to write it up for _The Chronicle_?

'I thought,' said Faith with a great effort at solemnity, 'You wanted to get off the weddings and fetes beat?' Kitty hastened to protest that this was different, of course it was. Mara said something gently teasing about the impossibility of Kitty being anything like unbiased in the reporting, and Faith, emerging triumphant from the letter pile, held a heavy missive aloft and said, 'Here's Rilla's account. Shall we see if she is more illuminating on the subject of Little Kitchener?'

Being met with affirmatives from all quarters Faith split the seal, squinted a moment at Rilla's slanting and hurried cursive, and then began to read.

 _I can't begin to think what the others will have told you,_ it ran, _but I thought I'd better set everything down neatly so you had a straight account of it._

 _By now you've almost certainly heard that Jims is coming back to Ingleside – and I suppose Susan has had an epistolary wail or two about his going with Ken or I to Toronto afterwards_. _What you have to understand is that there was really no other alternative._

 _You know, of course, that Jims was up at Ingleside during Mrs Anderson's confinement. But it really began before that, back when she was only expecting the baby. You'll remember Jims, he's such an energetic child. It was quite impossible for Mrs. Anderson to keep tabs on him, especially with the new baby underway. Well, she happened to mention this to me when I was over one Sunday for luncheon – I generally went every second Sunday to visit Jims at their invitation – and so I just offered to drop in some afternoons in the week, if she thought that would help. Elizabeth – that's Mrs Anderson, we'd quite got to first names by then – seemed to feel it would be a tremendous relief, especially since Jims had begun to get worse and worse about my going. I mean, we began those luncheons all right. Jims has never been an overly affectionate boy but he was always very glad to see me, but just lately, he'd begun following me to the door, and once or twice to come back up to Ingleside with me. Naturally he couldn't and there would be tears and all sorts, and of course I hated to see him like that. I suppose we all did. So my coming by through the week seemed an obvious solution, and if it meant Elizabeth Anderson had less to worry about – father had some concern about the baby, I remember – that was all to the good. And, of course, I got to see Jims out of it, which was really the best part of it, though naturally I couldn't say so. _

_Well, a couple of afternoons a week turned into whole days, and Jims just got worse and worse about my going, which was terrible for everyone, Jims not least of all. But as Elizabeth had to sort him out afterwards, and it was obviously trying her nerves, it seemed an obvious solution that Jims come back to us at Ingleside until the baby had come. He was terribly excited, you know, about the baby, and that made him rambunctious. And Jims in a mischievous fit would try a saint, really he would. The straw that broke the Anderson camel's back though was the morning he climbed the old silver birch in the garden and got himself stranded on the roof of a dormer window. So between that and the clinging to my skirts, back to Ingleside he came – where, incidentally, he became mild as a lamb. I mean, still with scrapes of course – Mother no doubt has told you of the Ice Melts Escapades, which was all Father's fault in the first place – but altogether more tractable. Mother says it's the monkey-faces, but I suspected it was Ingleside and rather think so did she, really. And all the while I kept trying to find time to remind Jims it wasn't a permanent arrangement. He'd quite set up camp in the cot in my bedroom though, and I hated to do it – and then of course it all went horribly wrong. _

_Father was called out extremely early for the Anderson baby – hour-wise, I mean, it was otherwise completely on track – and he was gone all day. I had expected Jims to be forever at the window waiting for news, rather the way Nan and Di say they used to be when waiting on Father to bring word to them of Mother and a baby – but he wasn't that way at all. Susan mentioned to him, I know, about getting a little brother or sister, and which would he rather, but he was eating a monkey-face biscuit at the time and not at all distinct in his words. Also he was preoccupied with the Sundial puzzle. He and Father solve it together, mornings, and Jims had set himself to seeing how many words he could come up with for it on his own. It was quite the list. _

_It seemed quite ages before Father came back, and later than ever in the day. The light was long gone, and it was a March baby, so as Mother says, a 'Spring Herald' – not that you'd have known it by the sky. It must have been the longest day in creation and it just wouldn't end – and not nearly enough light to show for it. And anyways, I'm not altogether sure Mother was right in this instance. _

_We knew at once that it had all gone wrong because Father looked positively grey. Jims was up in the garret by then, re-enacting a scene from The Jungle Book as it turned out, which made it quite safe for talking. Susan took one look at Father and drew her lips together the way she does sometimes, looking exceptionally grim. Mother just said 'Was it very bad?' all grey-eyed and her eyes like saucers. You know how she can look in a dark hour, I suppose. _

_Father just said, 'Come here, Anne-girl,' and I sort of wished I wasn't in the room, the way he said it, though it sounds like such a little thing, seeing it on paper. And the thing was, I couldn't go away, because I needed to know what had happened the same as anyone else. I wasn't a little pitcher with big ears, if Jims was. _

_Father has probably written and told Jem the lot in gruesome detail, so I won't dwell on it. It's too horrible. Except to say that as I understand it Mrs. Anderson got some kind of infection and nothing Father did was any good for it. The baby wasn't alive to start with. Quite purple, in fact, something about the cord, I think_.

'Around its neck, I shouldn't wonder,' said Faith, and shuddered. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Mara's hand, darting and practiced in uncontrovertibly Roman gesture against lingering evil. Judith had done it too, though she'd appended to it something in a language Faith couldn't place. Not English, not Latin, but obviously intended for the dead. Kitty said, 'That was like mother too, I think.'

Faith left off the letter and looped an arm around Kitty's shoulders. Kitty said, 'Don't stop, I need to know how we got from there to Jims at Ingleside now.' But she laid a glossy black head on Faith's shoulder, all the same, the weight of it warm and heavy in the afternoon sunlight. Out in the garden, the little gremlins shrieked excitedly over some new discovery. Faith said, 'Are you sure? It doesn't look like it improves.'

'Jims is back where he should be,' said Mara. 'I call that an improvement.'

'I'm trying to remember when the two of you were in the same place,' said Faith. 'I have no memory of this.'

'You wouldn't,' said Mara. 'It was 1917. You were nursing and Alastair and I were without a home to go to. Ingleside rather insisted on taking us in.'

In spite of herself, Faith laughed. 'Now I remember,' she said. 'I had all sorts of speculative letters from Nan on the subject. Somehow I never thought it was more than you girls who pinned hopes though.'

'Jims,' said Kitty drowsily into Faith's shoulder. Mindful of not dislodging her, Faith shook her head and resumed the letter.

 _It would have been a day or two afterwards that Mr. Anderson came to see us. Oh, Faith, it was quite awful. He appeared on the doorstep very late of an evening, squinting under the lamp on the veranda as if he were out in broad sunlight and as Susan afterwards said, very 'worse for wear.' Not, I think, that she held it against him. Between the baby and Elizabeth it was enough to upset anyone. I was still trying to work out how to tell Jims he'd lost another mother and felt terrible that I'd put it off even that long. I kept meaning and meaning to go up to the Manse and talk seriously about it with Una – because I guess I thought if anyone had advice on the subject, she would – only I hated to leave Jims, even at Ingleside. I'd got a kind of creepy idea that if I did, I'd come back and find him gone along with Elizabeth and the baby, and once I'd got it in my head I couldn't shake it. And since naturally I couldn't take him with me and talk dead mothers with anyone…well, there was Mr. Anderson on the veranda. It was well after supper, but Father brought him into the study and had Susan bring up some cold chicken and a bit of tea – I guess he thought James Anderson hadn't eaten much. Obviously Susan agreed, because I saw the tray she sent up, and there was ever so much more on it than chicken and tea. _

_Not that Mr. Anderson ate much of it; he just kept telling dad over and over again how he'd failed everyone. Jims's mother first, by going to war, and then Jims, between not writing forever and ever, and then Elizabeth Anderson – though how he makes this his fault is anyone's guess – and the little baby-that-wasn't, and Jims again, by taking away his new mother. _

_He went round like that for a bit, until finally Father summoned me into that study. Well, you can imagine how that made my blood go all over ice. I can't remember the last time I was summoned to that study for anything good – it always seemed to be where High Discipline was doled out. Well, I stood there among the carbolic lotion and goose grease and all those hundreds and thousands of records of Father's, and heard the same litany he had about all the people James Anderson had failed. But then he looked right at me and said, 'I guess Jims always will have a mother, though I fairly missed it for looking when I got back. Only it seemed so wrong not to try with him, his being Min's boy and mine, and all that. And Elizabeth really did love him.' _

_I said anyone could see that for looking. She and I would never have got to first names otherwise – though I didn't say that as you'll imagine. Even if I had, I don't suppose James Anderson would have heard me. He just said, 'I can't fail him again. And I thought – you were always so good to him – '_

 _I'm not exactly sure if he said the rest, or if I filled it in. The next thing I really remember is telling him of course I'd go on looking after Jims, always, if he liked. There were tears all round, but it did mean that later, when I got up my nerve and told Jims what had happened over his bath, I was able to work in that he wouldn't have to go away again. _

_Oh, Faith, his little hands came round my neck all soapy with water, and he put his little damp head on my shoulder and said, very solemnly, 'Then you won't go away again?' He was all damp with suds and water, and it was making me cold, and I was more than a little worried he'd get a chill, half-in, half-out of the bath like that. But he just stood there, head on my shoulder and those big eyes of his staring up at me saying, 'Not ever, Willa?' He hasn't called me that in an age . Elizabeth Anderson, among many other things, sorted Jims's R's to a nicety. But he kept on saying it and shivering there, half -in, half-out of the water. Probably I should have had some prepared nicety on hand about no one staying anywhere forever. I just hugged him back and told him no, not ever, because I was that relieved about it myself. I've missed him, his chatter and the impossible, unanswerable questions – why are horses so tall, and who named Wednesday, and what does God look like (this after your father preached a sermon on looking for the likeness of God in our neighbours) – though I never realised quite how much until he was back here getting into mischief. _

_Ken has, of course, been incredibly good about it, says he's always had a soft spot for Jims, but that's a different letter, and I haven't time now. He's just reappeared up to his knees in mud – Jims, not Ken! – and I must get him presentable before he tries to stage an invasion of Susan's kitchen. She's made up a Silver and Gold cake, and I suspect Jims very strongly of a plot to eat the icing off it. He has that look about him, and Susan's Silver and Gold cakes are never safe when Jims's in the house._

 _Anyway, now you know the how and why of Jims coming back, so won't be too surprised when you see him at Christmas, though I don't know what the others will make of it._

 _Love to all of you in Kingsport,_

 _Rilla_

'I'm glad,' said Kitty to the collar of Faith's blouse when she had finished. 'I'm glad he's at Ingleside. Not that I've seen it,' tilting her head upwards to look at Faith, 'but he sounds like he's in his right place, and that's good.'

Her hair was all tumbled with some earlier exertion, and Faith wondered what story Kitty had been in chase of to wreak such havoc on it. She began to smooth it flat and heard herself humming agreement, and thought how strange it was that once they had all joked of Rilla and her war-baby. Now, though, with the gremlins running riot under the windowsill and Rilla's letter in her hand, she could only feel in a gut-deep sort of way, that same instinctive gladness that Kitty had remarked on. The others had long since finished with the christening gowns; they lay now in finely stacked white lawn squares, waiting to be sewn up new. Through the window rapture teetered on the brink of warfare. Judith said, 'I'd better see to that,' and rose. Mara followed her and said, 'I'll get tea.'

Judith opened her mouth to contradict her, heard the start of a gremlin wail and relented in favour of averting catastrophe.

To Kitty Faith said, 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world.'

* * *

They had barely come to grips with Jims's reinstallation at Ingleside when news came from the Ingleside quarter to say their connection would be augmented in the autumn by the further expansion of the next generation in the shape of contemporaries for Jims. Anne Blythe was radiant with the revelation, or so Faith interpreted the plethora of dashes and exclamations punctuating the letter. _I am incandescently happy –the next generation –I never imagined, years ago…_ and so it ran for pages. Gilbert's letter to Di on the subject was more sedate, though as she said, refolding it into three even pieces, 'He's obviously pleased, whatever his doubts about the doctors in Kippewa region, Quebec.'

'I'm with him on that one,' said Jem. 'Our Nanlet can't have just _anyone_. Dad will go out himself – see if he doesn't. I'll bet you a dollar.'

Di declined to take the wager, as did Faith and Mara in turn. Teddy, without knowing anyone involved, only observed that it was very exciting, wasn't it, and proceeded to quiz Faith on the details of the letter that was really worthy of Kitty.

* * *

'It's good news, isn't it?' said Kitty later over the dinner table, when Faith and Mara had failed to leave the point in favour of gentle fussing over Nan's well-being and writing in equal measure.

'The best kind,' said Faith. 'If you've a taste for gremlins.'

'Have you not then?' said Kitty, and then yelped at Teddy's foot connected with hers rather too sharply under the table.

'Catkin has,' said Mara, 'which is really the point.'

'So long as it isn't catching,' said Shirley, no word of this a question. Then, in answer to something Kitty couldn't recall Mara having actually said, 'Give me a _little_ credit for knowing you, Ariel. You're entirely too preoccupied with _living_ to give much mind to gremlins.'

Mara said, 'Don't be absurd, it's only married women that need worry about gremlins,' and Faith, for no explicable reason that Kitty could find, choked on her tea. Still, it was easy to laugh about it over dinner, with the sun high and the cutlery chinking civilly against the crockery, the Morris wallpaper wilder and more decadent than ever in the spring sunlight. Teddy had roasted a ham and it was all that a roast ham should be, glazed, thick and richly honeyed.

'Your mother taught you, I suppose?' said Faith to him.

'Oh, no,' said Teddy. 'She never had time, what with the war and dad dying, and the little boys. Olly was always getting croup – the false kind – you know. No, I guess I learned by trial and error. Also Mrs Carlisle, when I got here. She's always been good to me – the inspector used to say it was her taste for lost causes.'

The laughter went all round the table this time, sunny and golden as the day outside the window.

* * *

The afternoon post brought a letter from Susan, not only conveying her sentiments on the subject of children, but strongly expressive of the opinion that they had all been the better for having someone to compete with. _You need only look at Mary Vance_ , said Susan, _and what good you did her, to see the truth of it_.

Here Jem dissolved into a spasm of laughter. 'Naturally,' he said between laboured breaths, 'she can't…admit…Miss Cornelia…any credit.'

'No,' said Faith. She took the letter over, skimmed its contents and then speaking without stopping to think, said, 'It's not, you know, that I don't want them at all.'

'Oh, I know,' said Jem. Apparently Faith's surprise at this registered because he laughed a laugh like a sunbeam and said, 'I should like to know what you and Mara think we Blythe men _do_ think about – as the women we love obviously doesn't make the list. You only don't want them _now_ – when you've got a degree that's more than awkward enough without their intervention. Never mind the fact that the Carlisle gremlins are quite enough for the average person to be getting on with. I'm not sure I count Teddy there, because well, he's _Teddy_ – and obviously biased where those gremlins are concerned. Judith definitely doesn't count, see further Geordie's observation about lost causes and how she would appear to be the Patron Saint of them. More to the point though, Geordie and Judith are much more partners in crime than we are.'

'Oh?' said Faith, 'and what, exactly, are we?'

Jem rubbed a hand over his forehead. 'I didn't mean it that way,' he said. 'I mean, it strikes me Judith's role has always been to see the things Geordie misses, especially in investigations, and she appears to be able to do it quite as easily from the kitchen table as she can from the station house, possibly more easily, in fact, since no one at the kitchen table is breathing down their necks about rules and regulations. It's not quite the same with you. I mean, we're more one of those units – like salt cellar sets or something -where you always find them in twos, but we don't necessarily do the same thing. And far be it from me, darling, to try and make you.'

That made Faith laugh, and Jem, relieved, felt the bristle ebb out of her. He pulled her into his arms and said, 'You'll forgive me if I don't quite catch the joke.'

'Which part?' Faith wanted to know. 'The one where I now have your anniversary gift sorted for the next twenty years at least, or where I borrow your explanation in an effort to deflect anyone who asks why half a year into this marriage neither of us appears to have considered the question of children seriously?'

'Are there so many?' asked Jem.

'Let me see,' said Faith, 'Una had a variation of Mara's line earlier about unmarried women not having children – though I rather think Una can be ascribed more earnestness. Susan would like to be able to hold her own with Miss Cornelia in all things and can't in this because Mary Vance – of all the unlikely people! – is expecting her second baby and Ingleside has only just reacquired Jims, Mother Rosemary won't _say_ but she keeps hinting that little Bruce is getting too big, which I take for her code for needing some other small person to make a pet of…'Here Faith, who had been enumerating these persons on her fingers as she went, paused. She said, eyes bright with laughter, 'shall I go on?'

Jem, reduced to laughter again, could only shake his head.

There was a rattle of doors as Teddy called down the hall, 'My turn for the Station House night shift. Don't leave the light for me, I'll be too late and it will go out.'

Then Kitty's excitable treble, 'I'll come with you. I can – '

'You _can't_ write up something under investigation!' came Teddy's voice from the stair.

'I'll _wait_ then, won't I?' Kitty again. 'But if I come _now_ I can have details that other reporters – '

'Kitty!' in exasperation. ' _Nothing has been reported!_ '

'But if it is – '

There was more mild bickering but by then Jem and Faith had lost track. A door slammed down the hall, and the front door shortly followed. Jem tempered his laughter and said, eyes sparkling, 'Someday I suppose we'll fit them in, but for the time being there's _definitely_ no need for gremlins. Not for ages.'


	13. Mallo in Adversity

_In preface to this: This is not my fault. Some of you, who shall remain nameless, recently reread a much older story of mine, hit chapter 6, and speculated as to how a similar scenario would play out in this universe. So off I went speculating too, and then, because I couldn't unsee it, I had to write it. And here we all are together. But it's not my fault. You almost got this story without this chapter._

 _As ever, love and gratitude to all of you reading and/or reviewing. And remember; not my fault. I only wrote it!_

* * *

In October Gilbert Blythe set out for Quebec. It didn't matter how many letters of reassurance arrived on Ingleside's doorstep vouching for the knowledge of the doctor in the far reaches of the Kippewa, Gilbert wasn't trusting his daughter's first child to a stranger. Certainly not to one that Jerry had unwittingly let slip was a solid half hour away in good weather. Nothing about the season was suggesting good weather, and for over a fortnight Gilbert's fevered brain had conjured everything from floods, to mud to unlooked for fires. Anything that might keep the good doctor away and leave his girl on her own. Which was why in October he bundled his clothes into one case, took up his doctor's bag in the other and set out for Quebec. Naturally Anne came too. That was never a question. He had said one evening 'I think I'll go see if I can help, if you don't mind, Anne-girl. Just to be there, you know.'

Anne had nodded over her rhubarb crumble and said serenely, 'She'll want her mother, Gil. I know I did.'

This left Susan in a quandary. She could not bear the thought of the Doctor and Mrs Doctor dear fending for themselves in some heathen wilderness. Nan wouldn't be able to see to the house, obviously, and someone would have to. And the thought of Mrs Doctor having to do all that again was untenable to her. But Rilla's wedding was rapidly approaching and going with them meant handing care of the last-minute details over to Mrs. Marshall Eliot, and that wouldn't do either. Not forgetting Rilla. Susan was sure that should she absent herself she would come home to a wedding feast that was minus a fruit-cake, but plus some frightfully exotic concoction by the name of petit-fours, and very probably those strange new-fangled salads with raisins in. That _Good Housekeeping_ was presently singing their praises assuaged her soul not at all. In _her_ day, the only good use for raisins had been fruitcake –and sustaining the odd canoeist, which Rilla's wedding guests most certainly were _not_. The magazine industry, in Susan's opinion, had much to answer for.

It was a white night for Susan, but the Doctor and Mrs Doctor won out. Susan had duly looked out the old iron wool, tucked it into her travel-case, and went with them to the boat, leaving Rilla's wedding to the fearful care of that young miss and Mrs. Marshall Eliot. But not before leaving strict instructions with Rosemary Meredith about the correct procedure to boil up a fruitcake and further away with Mara to telephone regularly and make sure 'Everyting was as it should be.' If it seemed as if neither woman took these charges so seriously as intended, well, at least Susan could say she had tried.

* * *

Nan met them with a glad shout, hastening to them as fast as was possible under the circumstances, pulling first her mother, then Gilbert into a hug.

'Oh it's _good_ to see you. And Susan!' seeing her for the first time.

She led them into the house, sun-baked for the time of year, and smelling of the sand trekked regularly through the door, of sea salt, lavender and the spices hung from the ceiling, mingled with linseed oil, turpentine and something else that Gilbert thought was probably accounted for amidst the general disarray of the kitchen counter. It was half painting oddments –brushes and oils and the like – half crockery, Nan's writing apparently having seen fit to take over the oval dining room table that pressed snugly against the other side of the counter. It was all very cosy, and it scandalised Susan. Though she did, Gilbert noticed, nod approvingly at the spices.

'That was meant to be cleared away by the time you got here,' said Nan, with a nod of her own towards the counter. Susan was already running water from the tap. No one seemed to have an original idea about how to stop her.

'It isn't always like that –but the weather's been lovely for going out of late, so naturally –'

Susan waved a large, worn hand unconcernedly. 'Don't you worry about a thing, Nan dear,' she said. 'Susan's here now. I shall keep everything in good order for you, and that you may tie to.'

Coughing fits that were nothing to do with the turpentine smell spontaneously arose among the other three, much to Susan's consternation. She left the washing temporarily to fill the kettle with tea.

'Here,' said Nan, gathering a mass of papers together, 'I'll make room.'

'No, no,' said Anne, taking her daughter by the elbow and steering her towards a loveseat that fronted a bay window with a view of the sea, 'I want to hear how you've been. Tell me everything. Gilbert, don't touch a thing or Nan won't ever be able to find it again.'

'I wouldn't dare.' He came and sat at Anne's feet, angled half towards the bay, half towards his wife and daughter. He was trying to take it all in at once, the house, the view, the sloping red cedar canoe half-visible on the shore, the daughter he hadn't seen since her leave-taking.

It was an idyllic visit. Susan fussed and clucked, Jerry talked landscapes, Nan and her mother both were radiant with the luxury of visiting uninterrupted. They talked children –he'd expected that a little –but mostly they talked writing, plots and motivations and the vexed question of Gregory Anselm's alibi.

'You see, the clock is set at two when it happens.'

'I see,' said Anne, 'but that's not the proper time, naturally.'

'No. Bede Chisholm stopped it the night before because…'

'Oh I see,' as Anne waved her hands animatedly, 'so it would really have been two in the morning when he stopped it. Sorry darling, you were explaining about Bee Chisholm. I take it he was angry about the head bell ringer asking Cecily Waters to the dance at –where was it?'

'The lighthouse. Yes, that's it…'

On like that, while Gilbert and Jerry shook their heads in bemusement and retreated to the sitting room with its low-slung coffee table where the chess board lived in perpetual residence. Once Jerry had looked up from negotiating a bishop and said, 'How much would Dr Parker mind if you just stayed on here?'

'You wouldn't want that,' said Gilbert, and smiled.

'Well, but Nan would.'

'Her mother too. You know,' felling one of Jerry's rooks with his queen, 'I'd worry more about Miss Cornelia. She doesn't all approve of what she says is Lowbridge trying to run the Glen.'

'Mm. Rosemary wrote about that. Something about their paper vying to buy _The Glen Notes_?'

'Mmhm,' said Gilbert. He blinked perplexedly as Jerry's remaining rook put him in check.

'Ken of course,' puzzling over the problem of check, 'is very keen on it, seeing as it would mean he and Rilla could stay on in the Glen.'

'Sorry, _Ken_ _Ford_ wants to live there?'

'No, I don't think so. But Susan's been making awful noises,' looking cautiously over either shoulder as he spoke, 'about their going to Toronto. She was doing it even before Jims re-entered the picture, but of course that's decided her. She's quite convinced it will be the death of Jims, Rilla and any future children she and Ken might have.'

'Yes, but Jem and Faith are in Kingsport and that's a city –'

'Ah,' said Gilbert, tapping his nose, 'but in the first place, , it has water that is water. An ocean, in fact, and that's much better. Now, Toronto has a lake, but she's not at all convinced about that. It's not the same, or something.'

'And in the second?' asked Jerry as Gilbert felled the hapless bishop.

'She has yet to admit we're never getting Shirley back from Kingsport.'

* * *

The children came early. They ambushed them one evening in November as they were seated outside around what was to be the last of the autumnal birch fires listening a few brave, stray crickets serenade them and watching for the first stars to appear. The evenings had grown short and cool, and the garden was full with great, exaggerated shadows of pines and resinous spruces, more silver than blue in the firelight and whose smell perfumed the air like incense. The bats had long since flown but there remained an owl or two swooping and diving on the wing of the moon for voles and other niceties. Perfect weather for a fire. Also for storks, as it transpired.

Gilbert had been watching it happen over the course of the day, from perhaps mid-afternoon, he thought. He thought Anne had noticed too, but had been too much taken up with counting the regularity of the contractions as they seized his child to keep much track of anything else.

It happened quickly after that. Anne went to boil water and find clean linen, and Gilbert, with a thought for the Kingsport Contingent, as they'd become in his brain, sent Jerry on a mission to the nearest telephone to keep them abreast of what was happening. They would all end up at Evensong, he supposed, that being the house with a phone. There would be Jem and Faith, of course, and Mara, as it was her house, which meant Shirley, and Una, no doubt white as a ghost at the news, Di, and Carl. Or perhaps not. It was insects that held Carl's attention. But no, Gilbert rather thought he'd be there too, crowded into the telephone nook with the others, perhaps less likely to count the minutes between rings as they came down the exchange, but he'd be there.

He settled Nan as comfortably as was possible and wondered idly who would make the Evensong tea. It was Mara's kitchen uncontestably, this time, but that wasn't going to stop Di _trying_ to interfere, and he rather fancied Una could hold her own in affairs culinary. He thought Rosemary had been heard to hint as much on occasion. No, she had missed the wrangling when Una went for Redmond, that was it. Susan had been incredulous. He'd missed someone. Alastair, if Di's letters were any indication. He was in them enough. But no, he was still leaving out…Teddy. He'd forgotten Teddy. And the reporter lass with a tongue like a bracken branch. Kitty. Teddy and Kitty. They'd be there too, in all likelihood. Nan and Jerry weren't _their_ people, but they were Jem and Faith's people, so yes, he supposed they'd be there too.

And then he was holding a baby on each arm, the one squalling lustily, the other squinting, as if not yet believing that she had been plucked from the comfort of the womb. He gave her a smile that was part-apology, but far more welcome. _We're glad to have you_ , as he cleaned and dressed them, before handing them to Nan.

* * *

'Have they got names,' he said later to Jerry, as they gazed at them. Nan was asleep, and they had dared to take the little girls down to the sitting room; now they sat each with a child cradled close to the chest, watching them, riveted.

'She's Amanda,' said Jerry, nodding at the little girl in Gilbert's arms. ' _Must be loved_ , you know. Like her mother.'

'There's a story in that,' said Anne, slipping in-between them, the better to look at both babies at once. 'And I want to know it. But not quite yet. It's not for telling, yet. Who's this little one then?' She touched a hand gingerly to the head of the little girl in Jerry's arms. 'Miranda.'

'Of course,' said Anne. ' _Oh brave new world_. It is, too. You don't worry…'

'Mandy,' said Jerry, nodding again in Gilbert's direction, 'Miri. No rhymes. No teasing.'

'Then I'm happy,' said the new grandmother. 'Although,' with a sigh, 'I am _sorry_ , darling.' She touched a finger to a sleeping Mandy's head, stroking the fuzz that lightly coated it. 'I'm afraid your doom is red hair.'

'Oh, it is,' said Gilbert, delighted.

'It may darken,' said Jerry, in consolatory tones.

'I hope not,' said Gilbert, and Anne shook her head.

'Ignore him, sweetheart,' she said to her sleeping granddaughter, 'he knows not what he says. But if you ever dream of dark hair, say raven-coloured, ask me first about that. I assure you, it doesn't work out _at all_.'

'There's a story in _that_ ,' said Jerry. 'Do we have time for it?'

* * *

In the sunlight kitchen of the little cottage, Gilbert watched the girls asleep, and felt something in him turn over. He'd often wondered –had often debated with Jo and John –if love had to be painful to be love. He thought perhaps it did. He looked at Miri, with her faint chestnut gloss and thought how exquisitely lovely she looked. How like her mother. How like Joyce, and before her, little Laura, who he only half-remembered from his own childhood. There, and then not. But that had been something else, he thought. She hadn't had Miri's colouring. She had been…he'd been too young to know. More preoccupied with beetles and birches than bones and breathing. But she had been sweet. Of that he was certain.

Idly he took stock of the babies' reflexes. Elbows; good. Feet; good. Pulse…ah, there it was. Not a murmur so much as…a stutter? A stammer? Gilbert wasn't sure there was a word for it. Experimentally he moved his stethoscope across Miri's chest, as if that would change it, make it less, perhaps not there at all. No luck.

He sensed more than heard Anne's approach behind him. His chair protested gently as she leaned against its ribs, and he was awash in floral smells. She had been tending the garden then. 'Are you going to tell me what's wrong?'

He almost choked on the smell of the columbines, the tiger-lilies.

'Not a thing,' said Gilbert staunchly. He turned his head in time to catch two fiery eyebrows rise in unbelief.

'Gilbert, you're looking at her…you're looking at her the way I looked at Joyce. As if you close your eyes, she'll vanish. Will she?'

'No,' he said, and dared to smile. 'Babies are often a little blue after birth. You must remember. Lungs still getting the hang of that complicated breathing thing and all that.'

'Yes, but Gilbert, that was three weeks ago.'

'I know.' He leaned his head back, so that it settled against her chest. His neck rested uncomfortably against the spine of the chair, but no matter. Anne smelled of tiger-lilies and columbines, and her hand was tracing the curve of his jaw. She had been gardening; there was earth under her nails, moist and ripe-smelling. It was like coming home. 'I want a second opinion,' he said, 'that's all.'

* * *

'You think something's wrong,' said Nan, startling Gilbert mid-exam. His head came upward like a jack-in-the-box sprung suddenly open.

'It's all right,' said Nan, sounding almost serene about it, 'so do I.'

'I think it's probably nothing,' said Gilbert, who was beginning to get good at saying it.

'No, you don't. I don't. Miri…She doesn't feed right. Doesn't latch as easily, and doesn't want as much when she does. And she sleeps more…'

'They're all different,' said Gilbert, who had made a career of telling young mothers to trust to their instincts in cases not wildly different from this one. Nan knew it. Too many hours coming with Di to bring him a 'light bite' after a late night out, he supposed.

'Tell you what,' said Gilbert, 'come back with us, why don't you? Everyone's dying to see the girls –you too, of course –and you can alight at Kingsport and visit Faith. Everyone there will have the babies to worship, Faith and Jem can tell you I'm right about Miri being completely normal while you're staying. Sound all right?'

'I'd like that.'

* * *

'You look exhausted,' said Geordie as Jem joined with him and Teddy in the inspector's office, heeding an early summons.

'Thanks very much.'

'Long evening?'

'Logistics,' said Jem, sitting down opposite his friend. 'Nan and Jerry are coming up to visit with the children, and they're to stay with –well, actually I haven't worked that out yet.'

'I still say I could sleep on the sofa downstairs,' said Teddy. 'The kidlets will be in their parents anyway, won't they?'

'Teddy, for the nth time, you are _not_ –'

'They can stay with us,' said Geordie unexpectedly. 'No really,' seeing the others goggling at him. 'We'll put them in the spare room. It's quite big enough. Judith will love having a baby to dote on.'

'Babies,' said Jem. 'There's two of them.'

'Even better.'

'You have what, the six gremlins? You cannot _possibly_ want two wailing, nursing infants –'

'You say it as if it's all new territory to me,' said Geordie, and laughed. 'You're forgetting those six gremlins. Seriously, Judith will love having them to fuss over, and your sister can catch her breath. She's going to want to visit with the others –girls who pin hopes, do you call them? –anyway.'

'Hm,' said Jem, unconvinced. He was trying to think how Faith would react to having two young children unrelated to her dropped into her house without so much as a by-your-leave. With a great deal of pluck, probably. 'That's the other thing of course. Mouse and –'Here he had to break off, seeing the others' bafflement, and gave up on Swallowgate-speak. 'Poppy, who used to live with them. She's coming to visit on purpose. Though I _think_ she and Peter are being put up at Evensong. So that's all right. Now, you wanted a word.'

'About a body in the library. It's still there, as far as I know. Fancy coming and having a look on-scene?'

* * *

Nan and Jerry arrived early in December, as the days were growing an edge of ice, and snow floated like feathers on the wing. Everyone wanted to meet them, but Dr. Blythe had made it very clear he didn't want the babies overwhelmed, and in the end Faith had channelled her most vivid memories of the martins she had learned from and outright insisted that only she, Jem and Di were going to meet the inbound Halifax train.

They arrived travel-worn and glassy eyed from the journey, Mother Anne and Gilbert half a pace behind them. Nan had one of the children slung across her chest in a wrap with seams and pieces Faith couldn't begin to parse, except to the even stitches that bespoke it being Poppy's handiwork, and Jerry had the other. Hugs were traded around the children, and greetings exchanged crosswise as everyone fought to talk at once.

'How have you been?'

'We don't hear from you enough!'

'You should have seen Evensong when that call came through –'

'When you said you were coming to visit! May I?' Cautiously, Di peeked at the little bundled strapped to Nan's chest. Miri's little face was pressed tight against Nan's body, and she blinked up at Di with wide brown eyes. Then the whistle on the train sounded and they stepped hastily towards the exit as all around them the crowd swam to life, ready to rush the compartments.

* * *

At the inspector's house, Judith had not only laid out a tea that even Susan Baker could not have faulted, but readied two well-worn Moses baskets. 'May I?' she said before so much as greetings had been exchanged and expertly plucked wee Mandy from her cocoon on Jerry's chest. Still quicker had she settled her in a basket. Faith was tolerably sure she blinked, thereby missing the transfer of Miri from mother to the same. She watched, only mildly stunned as Judith steered the travellers towards the parlour and its china, chattering soothing pleasantries to them as they went.

'You do that too, you know,' said Jem in her ear, a smile in his voice.

'I do not.'

'You have your moments. Ask Kitty and Teddy sometime.'

Faith laughed, following after the others. She could smell the delicate scent of rose tea, mixed with Judith's rich, buttery shortbread, and what she suspected was fresh rugalach. After a night spent dotting about Larkrise trying to put finishing touches on plans for their visitors' stay, tea felt well earned. The faint clink of china drifted back to them and in the doorway Faith said to Jem, voice playful, 'Possibly. But no one would ever mistake me for mild.'

That got a laugh from Di and Jem. 'No,' said Jem. 'Many things maybe, darling, but definitely not that one.'

* * *

'Aren't they gorgeous,' said Jerry, over the top of his sister's head.

'Very beautiful,' said Faith. Miri was indeed a beautiful baby. Downy brown tufts of hair set to evolve into the glossy coil that was Nan's own hair, eyes like hazelnuts, and a fine, delicate shade of blue. Like Delftware, Faith thought. Not all over, nothing so noticeable. But here and there. At the mouth for instance, and the base of her nailbeds. They were like little blue crescent moons. She was almost translucent with it. And her breath came in soft, warm puffs.

'You're worried for her,' said Jerry.

'I think she's a treasure, she and Mandy both,' said Faith, reassured not at all by the fact that Mara had taken one look at Miri and seemed to know too. She wasn't a doctor, not even a nurse, but Mara knew babies. She had grown up in a house never short of them, and if she thought it a bad sign…well, Faith hadn't exactly been looking to collect second opinion. She certainly hadn't wanted a third in the shape of Mouse's cool hand as she pressed it to the back of Faith's neck in passing. _I'm sorry_ there in the glance of her fingers. Now she was settled at Nan's feet, her head resting against her friend's knees, peaceably playing _To Market_ with Mandy's toes.

'You really must learn to _look_ a lie, at least,' said Jerry.

'Says the president of the Good Conduct Club. What is the world coming to?'

'Faith,' a hand closing fiercely, even painfully over her acromion, 'Is my daughter dying?'

'No,' said Faith resolutely. 'Nothing of the kind.'

* * *

'It's her heart, isn't it,' said Faith later to Jem, safely under the Country Fair quilt. 'It's not doing what it's supposed to. The blood isn't getting enough oxygen or something –it's why she looks like a cyanosis victim.'

'Good lord, what makes you say that?'

'Didn't you _see_ them?' asked Faith, sitting suddenly upright. 'Jem, we ran out of bloody _coffins_ –how could you _not_ –'

'I was coming home,' wrapping his arms around her. 'Darling, I'm sorry, I had no idea.'

'Hardly your fault,' said Faith. She let him pull her close, fitting her head to the place where collarbone met shoulder. It would send his arm to sleep, she supposed, but it seemed a small inconvenience considering she wasn't going to sleep at all that night. She could already tell; her own heart was going too fast, and her brain faster, racing through and discarding solutions. And the clock on the night table was ticking too loudly.

'I told Jerry she wasn't dying.'

'Then she won't,' said Jem, placidly.

'How can you be so calm about this?' in a whisper that was almost a hiss. She was out of the bed by then, pacing the length of their little room.

'My –our niece can't make her heart work and you're utterly unconcerned.' The damn clock was still ticking relentlessly; she stumbled, her foot coming up hard against the elaborate claw-foot of the bed. Faith swore softly. Jem had the nerve to grin at her.

'Quite. Can't possibly add to that.'

'How can you make light –'

'On the contrary,' said Jem, 'I happen to believe very seriously you're going to fix it.'

'Me?' said Faith, startled.

'You're the doctor, darling. You are the best medic they've got in training, and they know it. You could put the lot of them out of a job in a week, and they know that too. It's why they take such exception to you being there. I'm only the resident police surgeon. Much better you do it –call it good practice.'

'What,' said Faith, sitting down hard on the side of the bed, and rubbing her throbbing foot, 'about me operating on my very alive infant niece are you seeing as _practice_?'

'She'll be under ether, I hardly think –'

'You want her under _ether?_ ' in tones of incredulity. 'She fits in the crook of my arm, Jem.'

'Go back a bit, you'd rather she be awake while you mend her heart?'

'No,' said Faith, exhaling sharply through her mouth. She felt suddenly, unaccountably dizzy. 'No. You're right of course. It's only that she's so small, Jem. I've never –'

'She couldn't be in better hands,' said Jem, giving her shoulders a squeeze. 'Besides, I'll help.'

'We're still short a set of hands, even then,' said Faith. She felt faintly sick. The clock on the night table was still going, and a bad combination of wakefulness, nervous energy and the monotony of its second-hand meant that it had begun to sound to Faith like little Miri's imperfect heart.

'Dad's here,' Jem reminded her. 'And he was always supposed to have made a good surgeon.'

* * *

In the event though Gilbert Blythe went a colour Faith had never seen him go before, something like underdone bread, she thought. 'Better not,' he said. 'I haven't done anything that complicated in an age, certainly not on a child –a baby. I almost think you're mad for trying. But then,' with a shake of his head, 'the other part of me hoped you _would_ try, do what I can't for her. You'll find me keeping her parents' world from falling apart, if it's all the same to you.'

'Of course,' said Jem, as Faith tugged him out of the room and whirled on him.

'It's all right,' he said, evidently anticipating her storm. 'You go ready everything. I have a plan.'

'This isn't one of your larks,' said Faith, bristling.

'I should say not. Faith, it's a good plan. Trust me?'

There were no more words. Faith went as instructed, and Jem bolted like a steak of St Elmo's fire.

He was out of breath by the time he arrived on Geordie's doorstep, muscles overwarm with exertion, his lungs protesting painfully. He rapped once sharply on the door, and then bent over, hands to his knees to catch his breath, so that he entirely missed the appearance of Judith in the doorway. 'Whatever has happened?' she said, seizing his elbow as if he were one of her boys and half-guiding, half-dragging him into the house. 'I can't decide if you've seen a ghost or a fire, or what. No, get your breath back first. No use saying anything until then.'

He was still trying to follow this order when she reappeared from the kitchen with a glass of water in her hands.

'Drink it _slowly_ ,' said Judith, as if she didn't quite believe him capable of doing even this much himself.

'No time for that,' said Jem. He _thought_ she rolled her eyes, but couldn't be sure.

'It won't help anyone,' Judith said with asperity, 'if you drop dead here.'

By then Geordie had appeared, Jem's frenetic knocking having obviously conjured him from the middle of some tussle with the gremlins. He had a lad on each arm and one around his neck, but stood to attention even so.

'Don't tell me,' he said, 'That man Teddy suspected of the library murder has bolted. If he has we'll have a fairly clear-cut case, I suppose.'

'Geordie,' said Jem, still gasping painfully around a stitch in his side, 'how retired is Mac?'

'Christ,' said Geordie, 'what's happened? Not Faith, I trust. Kitty? Teddy?'

'Not one of mine,' said Jem. 'I mean, it is, but not quite so…oh it's a mess.' In a manoeuvre he failed to catch, Judith prised the children from Geordie and sent them out into the garden, whence they could be heard wreaking merry havoc under the windowsill. Judith, Jem couldn't help but notice, had meanwhile crept back to her place against the kitchen doorway, notwithstanding the door jamb that must have been cutting uncomfortably into the small of her back to judge from the arch and bristle of it. Briefly he recanted the story of Miranda.

'Christ,' said Geordie again. Judith pinched her lips, but Jem thought it had rather more to do with the story than Geordie's vocabulary. Jem opened his mouth to explain more, to somehow impress the urgency of the thing on them, but already Geordie was going for the phone and turning the dial.

'Mac,' he said, sounding almost careless, 'yes, yes, finally got 'round to calling you. No, not about that. Look, have you got a spare afternoon? No, not one of mine. Little gremlins are all hale and hearty. Something else…no, not the station house either. Look, it's rather urgent. You can have all the details you like once you're there. Yes, quite the favour. I owe you a round of golf or something. You choose. Yes. Thanks,' and he rang off.

'He'll be there,' said Geordie. Then, giving Jem a shove between the shoulder blades, 'Now get back to them!'

* * *

Faith looked dubiously at the table before her. To one side was a platter of unlikely instruments, many of them at least as long as Miri's arm, all of them gleaming with polish under the electric light. The air had that oddly sterile smell that came with hospitals, almost the way a house smelled after a summer standing idle, but crisper somehow. There were traces of iodine, ether, and carbolic lotion competing with each other and mixed with them in terrifying combination was that soft, strange new-milky smell of little Miri in her blankets. Faith undid them cautiously. She could hardly be swaddled through surgery. Somewhere on the other side of that door was Nan, and Jerry, never mind Dr Blythe and Mother Anne. Miri's hands came free and flailed gently on the table, delighted at the unexpected freedom. Faith held out a finger to Miri, and was faintly shocked when she grabbed it in reflex. _But of course_ , thought Faith, _most natural thing in the world_. Her little blue-rimmed hands felt _strong_ , that was the absurd part. But for those little puffs of breath and the edging of blue she might almost have been normal. 'You'll be fine,' said Faith to her charge, because the alternative, one in which she looked Nan, Jerry and the others in the eye and tell them she had failed was one she wouldn't countenance. 'You're going to be just fine. Auntie's looking after you. Now, to begin with, it will be like going to sleep. Your uncle's fetching a friend –well, a friend of a friend –and he's going to give you the littlest, tiniest, bit of ether…' there was a wail from Miri. 'No, darling. I don't like it much either. It smells awful. But somehow, I don't think you'll notice. After that…'

She had all but talked the procedure through when Jem appeared, a dour-looking, dark-haired gentleman at his heels. He took one look at Faith and said to Jem, 'I wouldn't have thought you'd have need of a nurse.'

'No,' said Faith, extending a hand. 'He hasn't.'

'Mac,' said Jem, 'my wife. Faith, Mac. Faith, as I'm sure Geordie's told you, is on the verge of becoming a doctor.'

Faith wouldn't have put it quite like that, but she wasn't arguing. The man called Mac looked unbelieving as it was. But he was there. Jem was there. And Miri was lying on the table kicking her little blue toes with infantine gusto, and she wasn't going to die, because Faith wasn't going to let it happen. What was it he'd said to her in the small hours of the other night? _You are the best medic they've got in training, and they know it. You could put the lot of them out of a job in a week, and they know that too. It's why they take such exception to you being there._ Well, he wasn't wrong. Her fingers closed around a scalpel and she caught herself thinking of an old wartime ritual, something her overseeing doctor had been want to say. 'It's not really a lass's work,' she said now, in spite of herself. She couldn't have said which of them she said it for.

'Well it's not _my_ work,' said Mac with emphasis, 'and _someone_ had better get on with it.' Almost, Faith smiled. 'If it comes to that,' she said, smoothing the down on Miri's head, 'it's not generally a baby's lot either, all this fuss with ether and needles. Shall we get on?' Not waiting for an answer, she rinsing her hands in carbolic lotion, the tarry smell of it making her grimace, 'Doctor, if you could administer the ether…'

He looked as incredulous as she felt, but he went and did it. Then he set a large brown paw at Miri's elbow, the better to find the brachial pulse, because she was still at that curious, almost neckless age, and Faith breathed easier. They would all be all right.

* * *

In the event, it was almost easy. Somewhere after that first terrible minute with the ether her heart receded from her throat and resettled in her chest. Then it was over, and Faith caught herself releasing a breath she hadn't meant to hold. Opposite her, Mac extended a hand and said, 'that was bloody good work, doctor.' She smiled at him, and said as she took his hand, 'I couldn't have done it without you.'

'No,' he said wryly, 'maybe not. But the wee lassie's all right, and that's the main of it, I guess. Can't do better than that.'

Faith nodded in agreement. She was feeling faintly dizzy. Ether, she wondered, or sheer relief at having walked through fire in tact?

'Well go on, then,' said Jem, prodding her gently, 'you did the work. Go tell them she's all right.'

Faith went, moving as though asleep. Nan ran at her and all but bowled her over in her eagerness for news. But words were Nan's trick. Faith could only nod, and turn her as she would one of her corners in a dance, the easier to pass Nan through the door to her daughter. Jerry was close at her heels, Anne with him.

'You'll be fine,' said Gilbert as she collapsed onto the sofa beside him. 'The likelihood of more than one baby with a quirk like that in a family is so slim as to scarcely be worth dwelling on.'

'I know,' said Faith. Then, registering what he had said, she turned her head and said, 'How did you know? When did you guess?'

'You looked it,' said Gilbert simply. 'It was on your face while you were watching her. You might say to Jem.'

'I meant to,' said Faith. 'I was even _going_ to. Fair warning before Christmas and all that. But then Nan and Jerry arrived with the children and midway through making plans for performing surgery on my new-born niece didn't seem quite the time and place.'

That got a laugh from Gilbert, deep-throated and warm. 'No,' he said, 'I don't suppose it would.'


	14. Hand in Glove

_I happen to think you've been harrowed enough - don't you? As ever, thank you for reading and reviewing through the business that is the claims of the rest of the universe._

* * *

In the aftermath of what Faith took to calling Miri's Trial By Ether in her private thoughts, the families seemed to take a collective breath and busied themselves with making plans for Christmas.

'You'll go home, I suppose,' said Kitty bleakly, giving the fire an unnecessary accusing jab. Sparks issued forth in a shower, alighting on her hair, shoulders, and the nearby rug, where they smouldered gently.

'That's the plan,' said Jem. 'Someone else's turn for Christmas, this year, I reckon.'

'Definitely,' said Faith, nodding her head in agreement. 'Someone else can do battle with the state of teaspoons and silver platters. Ariel, if I didn't know you found the thing therapeutic, I'd _almost_ say that's why you've put off giving Susan anything remotely resembling a date for a wedding.'

Mara laughed, and reaching for a cushion, threw it lightly Faith's direction. 'Hardly,' she said, laughter colouring her voice. 'Anyway, the answer to the question you're not asking, _a charaid,_ is Midsummer, should anything else ever be settled.'

Faith said, 'Right, well, should you change your mind, I really do recommend –'

' _Don't_ ' came the resounding answer from Mara and Shirley as one, making the others laugh.

'Finish that thought and we might just take you up on it,' said Shirley.

'Mm. Well, you can have Susan's indignation on your head afterwards,' said Mara.

'I don't know, I expect she'd forgive me the offence eventually,' said Shirley, and grinned the infamous Blythe grin with its mixture of mischief and wry humour. Mara's eyebrows rose. She said, ' _You_ she certainly would. No one contests that point. Me she would never forgive –not that, at any rate.'

'Oh, she's fond of you really,' said Shirley. Jem, who had dived into seams of the sofa cushions some time ago, now said rather hastily from their depths, 'Well it hardly seems necessary, if everything's as in order as all that.'

'Which of us said bolting had anything to do with that?' said Shirley.

' _Don't_ ,' emphatically, this time from Jem, Teddy and Kitty, amidst the others' laughter.

'Christmas,' said Mara firmly in an effort to deflect conversation into other channels, 'Kitty, what does your Christmas look like?'

'I'll be here, I suppose,' said Kitty, 'keeping the house warm, or something.' She gave the fire another jab with the fire guard, sending a log toppling onto the tiles and more flying embers scattering across the room.

'Let me do that, _a leannan_ ,' in spite of the fact that the fire had never been Mara's chore in olden days.

'You don't mean,' said Teddy, ever-helpful, 'You've not got anywhere to go?'

If looks could kill, Faith thought, the two blue daggers aimed Teddy's way would have done so swiftly and painfully.

'Not at all,' said Faith, getting an arm improbably around Kitty's slender shoulders. 'You'll come back with us, won't you darling?'

'No, No I –I mean, you'll want someone to collect the post and all that, won't you?'

'Geordie can do that if we leave him a key,' said Jem mildly. 'From the sound of it, he'll welcome the excuse to dodge the influx of family for the season.'

'But –' protested Kitty, but to no effect.

'You'll like an Ingleside Christmas,' said Mara, 'they've got a trick for snaring you into the middle of them.'

'I thought they'd done that already by the time you were staying for Christmas?' said Kitty, for which burst of playfulness she found herself catching the seam-end of a cushion in her turn. But Mara was laughing, they both were.

'You'll come too, won't you?' said Jem, turning suddenly to Teddy.

'No, no I really can't,' said Teddy. 'I've promised the little boys. It's the only time I see them now, and I'd only end by feeling guilty if you talked me into it.'

Jem nodded. 'Can't say fairer than that,' he said. 'I suppose you _will_ be there though,' turning to Mara. She shook her head.

'I've promised home I'll be back this year. They've finally got a house again, or something approximating one, and they want to make an occasion of it. I'll come down for Rilla's wedding though –I've said to Susan.'

'Since when –' began Faith but never finished.

'Years, I should think,' said Shirley, 'to judge from the letters I used to get.'

* * *

They arrived late in the season, Jem having stayed to see the case of the body in the library through. They reached the bustle of the Glen St Mary station in time for Advent IV, conveyed thence by an imperfectly heated second-class carriage, an extravagance Faith suspected that was more for Kitty's benefit than her own. Even so, Kitty had spent the first leg of the journey ramrod straight, blue eyes darting suspiciously around her as if she half expected the train, the rolling landscape, or perhaps just Faith and Jem to vanish. She had relaxed on the boat, reduced to giggling over Jem's obvious discomfiture. Noticing, Jem had put on a show well worthy of the Kingsport Gilbert and Sullivan lunatics, crossing his arms and twisting his mouth in comedic injury as he said, 'A fine way to treat a suffering fellow-human,' so that Kitty collapsed helpless against Faith's side, her eyes streaming with tears that were as much his doing as the twist of the wind.

Arriving safely in Charlottetown they found a fault in the engine had decommissioned the normal express, leaving them in the plodding hands of the milk train. Jem said brightly as he clapped a hand on Kitty's shoulder, 'Just think, you get a glimpse at every God-forsaken village, hamlet and stile between here and there.'

'Oh, I don't mind,' Kitty said, and apparently meant it. She spent the ensuing journey all but leaning out the window as she fought to take in the rolling landscapes around her.

They had expected the knot of Blythes and Merediths on the platform and forewarned Kitty accordingly. A necessary precaution, it emerged when they stepped off the train and into the thick of the swarming throng of relations. In moments they were swallowed by assorted arms and hands as cheeks were kissed and hugs exchanged, all over exclamations of welcome (the mothers), concern for what and how much they were eating (Susan), the usual excitable patter about timetables and train speeds from Bruce and finally, petitions for news from what seemed six corners at once. Even the little twins were there, bundled into approximately forty layers between them, and over whose well-being at exposure to cold Di proceeded to cluck, to the gratification of Susan, who followed along nodding agreement, having vented her concern about Kingsport's butchers and greengrocers to her satisfaction.

Jem and Shirley negotiated luggage between them, ably assisted by the frenetic leaping of Dog Monday and an ebullient Jims, who released Rilla's hand long enough to run to them with excitable chatter of Rilla's upcoming wedding. Faith seized Kitty's elbow lest she be lost in the crush and the questions began in earnest. There were the usual inquiries after health and the academic year, followed up by requests for news of the people they were missing. Rev. Meredith, smelling heavily of books ink, and the cedar pouches of his office, was keen to know if there had been any talk in Kingsport about the revisions due to _Common Praise_ , beloved hymnal of the Presbytery. Did Jonas Blake have any thoughts? And had they heard how the plans for a mission out East were going? He understood from a recent letter the plan had been due to go before the presbytery, but perhaps they had heard…

Gilbert meanwhile was anxious to know if they had heard how the McNeilly family found the new house in Halifax. He had an idea from Susan that it was smaller and further from the water than Anchorage house had been, but thought it likely one of the girls could be clearer on this point. Before they could elaborate, he had further expressed the sentiment that he would be grateful if one of the girls would shed light on Mouse's Christmas plans.

'Tell her I take it as a personal affront,' he said, 'that we have yet to get her to Ingleside.' Una having undertaken to answer for all things Patterson Street, Di set to satisfying her father's questions. Now she raised two red eyebrows at him and said mildly, 'I'll tell her you said that with the look of a Cheshire cat about you, shall I?' Gilbert threaded his daughter's arm through his and said only, 'Fair warning, I think Susan misses having people to take the teapot from.'

'Right,' said Di, 'so I'd better to my utmost to get underfoot in her kitchen, you mean?'

Anne had sufficiently taken stock of her children that she now let them go, and wrapped an arm around Kitty's shoulders as she sequestered her person. 'I do hope,' she said, 'You like garrets. I've always felt ours to be quite the snuggest room in the house. It's got a ceiling window for counting stars through and listening to the rain, and all kinds of inviting nooks for candles. Though of course, there's no reason we can't shunt you in with one of the others –Di perhaps –if you'd rather. It can be strange, first nights somewhere new. But I rather thought…'

Kitty was quick to offer reassurance on the matter of the garret. Faith, catching this, and finishing with her own familial reunion, turned to Jem and whispered, 'I do believe we've found someone that can outtalk Kitty.'

'Teddy will never believe you,' said Jem, and laughed. Here further discussion was cut short by Susan's recollection of her rack of lamb, left to cook while she had waited the train, now in urgent need of her attention.

Then they were all at Ingleside, jostling and knocking elbows for positions at the table, leaves stretched to capacity and groaning under the weight of Susan's culinary extravagance. Kitty's eyes were wide as saucers as she turned to Faith and said, 'You and Mara never said it was like _this_.'

The lamb was done to a turn, replete with rosemary, thyme, and basil that mixed with the juice in a rich, heady scent that washed over the room as a wave. It was tempered by the sweetness of the carrots, and the salt of bacon intermingled with the faintly overboiled smell of cabbage that was brussle sprouts. These Jims declined to eat, running instead around the table while the Long-Armed Wailing Monster -erstwhile Dr Blythe - threatened to suspend upside-down all boys who disdained their greens. Dog Monday was begging for scraps, and Jem complying while all around the table a symphony of dishes rattled and chinked as people attempted to hand them round in too confined a space. Hands jarred elbows and shoulders, occasioning much laughter. This woke the twins, who proceeded to burble in contented chorus from their corner, and in the midst of the riot, Kitty looked up at Faith and said, 'Is it always like this?'

'Only when two or three are gathered together,' said Faith. Kitty shook her head, baffled, Una looked gently alarmed, Nan and Rev. Meredith laughed. Jem said helpfully, 'Don't worry, it isn't _all_ on your account, Kitty,' and Faith leaned across the table to give him a swat on the arm.

* * *

The marriage of Rilla Blythe to Kenneth Ford fell on the unlikely date of December 31, 1921, just in time for the couple to see the New Year in together, a notion the mother of the bride was said to find quite romantic, though others were dubious about the weather. The fact of the wedding was duly reported in _The Glen Notes_ , where it occupied a whole four inches of space and gave, in varying degrees of importance, the full names of the happy couple, their family and connections, the presiding minister, church, and the arranger of the poinsettias at the front of the church, and the anthem sung by the choir. It neglected to mention the heavy involvement of the former Junior Reds in the proceedings, thereby offending principally Irene Howard and Olive Drew –Kirk as had then been. Ethel Reese went so far as to suggest she was surprised at Rilla Blythe's wedding occasioning so much column space, when she wasn't anyone particular, and the Fords people that hadn't lived on the Island in years. To which Betty Meade, who had since been seen to walk out on the arm of the paper's chief photographer and was ,therefore, a considered authority on all things printed in it, was heard to observe several times over in the following weeks that four inches was not nearly so much space as Miss Reese supposed –modest, in fact, considering the Doctor's standing in the community –and certainly not worth sour grapes over. The annual Church Fete routinely ran to _three_ inches, after all, and it hardly seemed to Betty to be a comparable occasion. Either the church fete overestimated it's importance or the Ford-Blythe connection had downplayed its own. She did not elaborate on which of these she thought the more likely, trusting the intelligent observer to draw the appropriate conclusions. None of this display of loyalty was observed by those continuing at Ingleside to make any noticeable difference, except inasmuch as thereafter Irene and Olive were seen by Miss Cornelia to cut Betty Meade at the church coffee hour, for which ostracism –if she could be allowed just the _slightest_ of opinions – Betty did not appear to be suffering overmuch.

Susan, hearing this, said, 'I have always held that Betty Meade had more gumption than Olive Drew had in her little finger. And as for _Irene Howard_ …'But Susan did not deign to opine on such inconsequential persons as Irene Howard.

* * *

Minnie Crawford was _stunned_ that Rilla Blythe's dress was so _shockingly_ old-fashioned. Why, it fell almost to her _ankles_ and had very little beading, and a vast quantity of lace –surprising, since Rilla certainly _used_ to like to be fashionable. Lace had been 'out' for months. What was _really_ surprising though, if Olive Drew was to be believed –and Minne Crawford couldn't see any reason _not_ to believe Olive –was that Rilla had made all that lace _herself_. And _she_ had certainly thought the Blythes were the sort who could have afforded a tailor for their daughter's wedding. Not for everyday affairs, obviously –Irene had reported this for a fact, and Irene would _know_ –but for a _wedding_ –well, all Minnie could say was that it must have been very hard on Rilla, having to make up her own dress. _She_ would never be seen to do anything of the kind.

Connie McAllister couldn't understand why Rilla should have wanted a winter wedding, and said so to Betty Meade, who at this stage, according to the photographer of _The Glen Notes_ had still had patience to talk with Connie. That being the case Betty remarked on how well white suited Rilla and always had. Yes, said Connie, hadn't she worn it almost immediately after her brother had died? She had thought it very odd at the time, not, of course, that she knew anything about it…Betty, with some asperity, had agreed, venturing to ask if hadn't all three of Connie's brothers stayed home during the war? Connie, to be sure, hadn't meant to put anyone's nose out of joint. It was just that there was so _much_ white, what with the snow –and of course the cold! How could anyone bear it?

In short order Betty proceeded to report on the vivacity of the poinsettias in the church, the fact of the church and its having a roof –much better too, now they'd finally got the leek in the chancel mended, courtesy of the former Reds refurbishing fair, pausing here to observe that of course, Connie hadn't been able to help in the organizing of it –and of the assorted fabrics suitable for winter wear. Voile and tulle _were_ admittedly, rather flimsy this time of year, but had Connie considered a good muslin for the Midwinter dance? Or perhaps wool? Especially since Connie didn't appear to have much taste for dancing, and really that was better than anything for keeping one's blood warm…

Alice Clow meanwhile, thought it was very good of Ken, taking on the little Anderson boy like that. Rilla, of course, had always loved babies, had always had them around her, but she wouldn't have thought – Here Miranda Milgrave, hoisting small Polly up onto her hip and safely out of the way of oncoming traffic, was heard to remark, 'There was only ever Jims.'

Was there really? Alice was quite surprised. She would have _sworn_ – but then, she supposed one war-baby was more than enough for anyone, even Rilla Blythe.

'I thought it rather sweet,' said Miranda, extracting Polly's thumb from her mouth. 'Plucky too, seeing how Rilla then was more for cats than children. But ,' this staunchly, 'she was very good to Jims.'

Alice was hasty in her declaration she had no doubt on _that_ score, none whatever. She only thought it was a bit odd – well, Ken Ford just hadn't seemed the sort to so whole-heartedly adopt someone else's baby, that was all. Miranda, struggling to free her lace collar from the clutches of small Polly's mouth, nodding in the direction of Ken Ford, then dancing with Jims as the boy stood on his shoes, and said serenely, 'Ken Ford has always been devoted to Rilla. I guess that includes looking after little Jims. Not, of course,' as she successfully prised the collar from between Polly's eye teeth, 'You'd know much of what that's like.'

So saying, Miranda floated off in the way of all good blue china shepherdesses to join with Betty Meade and give the wedding a talking over that _was_ a talking over.

* * *

Gertrude Oliver, passing a knot of former Junior Reds, just caught Irene Howard holding forth on the subject of 'Little Rilla' setting up with Ken Ford. Not, of course, that she was surprised at Rilla marrying, Rilla had _always_ been fond of children, but _Ken_ –how many names had he been linked to in the Glen over the years? And Ethel Reese, nodding vigorously, didn't see this changing. All _she_ could say on the subject, was that she was very sorry for Rilla, who between being practically _deported_ –Ethel's word –to Toronto, and the everlasting stream of former paramours, was bound to find Toronto life very awkward. Especially because, Irene said, taking up the thread, there were almost certainly going to be any number of _functions_ to attend, and Toronto gatherings were hardly in the same bracket as those war concerts Rilla had organized. Not to cast aspersions on those, naturally. Irene wouldn't dream of it. They had been quite good in their way, but not at all the thing for Toronto. No, really, she felt quite sorry for Rilla.

Here Gertrude drifted away, overwhelmed in equal measure by the contradictory temptations of laughing like a loon and cheerfully throttling the elegant neck of Miss Howard.

'Though why,' said Gertrude Grant, muscling her way between the famous Ingleside twins, 'Irene Howard feels she's in a position to cast stones when she is _still_ Howard, and likely to be for the foreseeable future, I don't know.'

'What I don't understand,' said Nan, shifting the sleeping weight of little Mandy from one arm to the other, 'Is when she started putting stock back in Ethel Reese's opinions. Didn't they fall out over…'

'Ethel's frock at the Midsummer dance back in '13?' offered Di. Then she grinned at the others. 'Irene was _certain_ Ethel deliberately matched the cut and colour of it to show her up.'

'That's right, she swore up and down Ethel had nicked the pattern during a quilting session, didn't she?'

Gertrude resettled her squirming son –listed as Robert Oliver Grant among the christening records of the Charlottetown Presbyterian church, but colloquially Robbie – more comfortably on her lap, from which vantage point the dark-haired imp made industrious grabs for her hair. This fazed Gertrude not at all; she folded one childish hand into her large on and said placidly, 'Do you know, girls, I don't believe I was there. Anything I ever got to hear was just that –hearsay from you and Walter.'

'That's right,' said Di, 'You would have had most of your weekends in Charlottetown at the time. Now the really silly thing, as I recall about that spat was that Ethel would _never_ have worn that shade of burgundy if she could have helped it. She knew as well as anyone else it made her look like a heat-wilted geranium.'

'I'm not convinced Irene carried it off particularly well either,' said Nan, 'but she thought she did, and that was the point.'

'Rilla always had this funny idea,' said Gertrude laughingly, 'of the two of you as clawless. I must have caught it off her, all those years of the war. I'd forgotten how much vim you could put into pulling a social evening to pieces.'

'Years of passing too close to the Ladies Aid,' said Nan with a smile. 'Rilla can do it quite well herself, you must have noticed.'

'Oh yes, the famous _cold pale tone_ , naturally. She _does_ make a lovely bride, whatever Ethel and Irene say.'

'She does,' said Nan, 'the rest is all hundreds of petty jealousies. How many times did Ethel try to snare poor Ken?'

Di laughed, and shook her head, red curls bouncing against her shoulders. 'I think we lost track once our tally hit double figures,' she said. Gertrude, feigning horror, clapped her hands over little Robbie's ears and said, 'The cats are well among the pigeons this afternoon!' Her dark eyes sparkled though, and she said reminiscently, 'Were you home for the white georgette?'

'No,' said Nan, 'I think we heard afterwards that it ended as Miranda's wedding dress, though.'

It was Gertrude's turn to nod. 'Now _that_ was a wedding that justified a bit of gossip. Such a comedy of errors. I'd relive it in its glory for you, but someone,' giving little Robbie a jostle for good measure, 'is fussy this afternoon. I think I'll duck into your kitchen and see if Susan still keeps a supply of girning water. She used to, when Jims was little.'

So saying, she tucked the recalcitrant Robbie under one arm and set off purposely in the direction of the Ingleside kitchen, leaving the twins laughing.

' _That_ ,' said Di, watching her go, Robbie's legs kicking wildly from under Gertrude's maternal elbow, 'is something I never thought I'd see.'

'What, Gertrude lightened, or Gertrude preoccupied with things like girning water?' asked Nan.

'Both, if it comes to that. But it was the first thing I meant. Even when we knew her she was at least two-thirds pensive cloud. Part of Walter's fascination in her, I suppose. She's better for the leavening.'

'I think we all are,' said Nan. 'Speaking of which, I hear from Mara that Alastair is spending an awful lot of time at _The Chronicle_ all of a sudden.'

'Yes, something to do with plans to rebuild the old library.'

'You know an awful lot about it, to say it isn't your patch.'

'Strictly speaking, only the reporters have those. Ask Kitty. They're all tripping over each other not to steal each other's news, while we photographers rush around like headless chickens. I know more about that blessed library renovation than I ever wanted to.' In Di's arms Miri began to kick protestations at the unfairness of being small, bundled in lace and generally neglected by the universe in favour of a discussion of the Kingsport library. With some difficulty Nan leaned over the boneless weight of Mandy's sleeping body, and lifted her sister out of Di's lap. 'Come here you,' she said soothingly, and to Di, 'In another life I think they used to call that courting.'

'Yes, well, I call it you being over-analytical. It's the inevitable consequence of reading English.'

'Your subject too, as I recall. And anyway, however you paint it, I make that a very convenient excuse.'

At this particularly interesting junction, Jerry appeared, having extricated himself from a knot of former classmates most of whom had felt compelled to accept the congregation-wide invitation issued by the Blythes, only some of whom were concretely connected to the parties concerned. He looked exhausted, Di thought, but then he extended his hand to Nan in offering of an upcoming dance and the sentiment seemed to ebb like water. There was only Jerry, mouth twitching at some private joke between them, and Nan like a sunbeam radiating a mixture of pleasure and understanding.

'You go,' said Di, grateful for the reprieve 'Leave the Misses Meredith with their auntie. I don't mind.'

Nan appeared to consider this, then relented, but said as she handed her children over, lace smocking and all, 'We're not done talking, you know.'

'Oh no,' agreed Di mildly. 'There's a thing or two we have yet to hash out, I think.'

Then Nan took Jerry's hand and allowed him to lead her not onto the floor, as Di had supposed, but out of the hall towards the maple wood, laughing at his unspoken _what was all that, then_?

'Tell you later,' said Nan at the door. She spared a glance over her shoulder for Di and the little girls, and for a moment she stood poised on the threshold. It was only a moment though, and then they were outside, away from the noise and the gay whirl of it all, with time enough and world enough to steel as many dances as they should choose among the trees.

* * *

Anne watched them go from the chair she had appropriated along the wall of the church hall, her cup quietly overflowing. How often had she prayed this for them? Oh, they'd all had their share of pinches and bruises along the way, she supposed, but wasn't that half the adventure? There was Rilla, her namesake's amethyst broche at her throat, floating more than dancing on Kenneth Ford's arm. He had outgrown Anne's memory of him, the little dark-haired Puck Susan had so resolutely spanked –how many times? Now he was beaming as though he had caught the moon, or perhaps only its silver apples, as Yeats described them. Not far off were Nan and Jerry, islanded together, evidently a world away from the rest of the company, just discernible still through the hall windows. They had been like that even when the tremulous whistle of Miri's continued existence had rattled through all of them –was it really weeks ago? As if together they were a little inlet that sheltered upon itself, offering up comfort, security, and reassurance in perpetuity. So many miles, Anne thought from those tearful, first evenings of the war, after Jerry had gone, and Nan had been so unsure of her world. Faith half-tugged Jem out into the dance, her entreaty, 'Well come on then,' drifting prosaically back to Anne on the wind, and she laughed in spite of herself.

'Brings it all back, doesn't it?' said Gilbert, sitting down beside her and taking in the spectacle the others made. 'Let me see,' he said reminiscently, 'we were in the old Green Gables orchard, and even the birds sang. They don't often, that time of year.'

'In September? Oh, they do if you know where to listen. Though I like your version better,' said Anne, 'there's so much more romance in the idea of being serenaded by birds.' She leaned snuggly against him, sheltering her head on his chest and breathing deeply the smell of him, tobacco, coffee, camphor and carbolic lotion –and the littlest hint, this afternoon, of blood. Thomasina Drew's baby had chosen that morning – 3 o'clock, if Anne's brain could be relied upon –to make her entrance into the world, but since then they had been blessedly uninterrupted. The air was full of the Christmassy smell of poinsettias, an orchestra of laughter mingled with the full throb of the music emanating from the far end of the room, ably led by Ned Burr. Gilbert was right; impossible not to look at them all there, on the dance floor and not recall their own wedding, even to the angle of the sun on Marilla's new straw hat and the scent of the apples. 'There was that lovely prayer of Jo's,' she said to Gilbert's dress shirt, 'Rachel never forgot it, you know.'

'Nor did I. _Stay these hearts upon each other in their joining that they might meet the world as one –_ Though John acquitted himself in fine fashion, this afternoon, I must say.'

'Yes. The line about _walking hand-in-hand through the valleys and plains of life_ especially.'

'I thought you'd like that,' Gilbert said, one hand coming to rest on the crown of her head, stroking her hair absent-mindedly. 'Now, we had nothing so daring as –Anne-girl, _what_ is the name of this thing our children make look so easy?'

'Dancing, dearest?' said Anne, eyes wide, green and laughing. That won her a laugh, Gilbert's chest rippling with it, warm against her cheek.

'That much I did know.'

'Oh,' in tones of affected innocence, 'you meant the Foxtrot?'

Gilbert shook his head. 'All this citified dancing –it's nothing like the stuff we sent the children off to in olden days.'

'No, poor Silver Spot would quite spook if he could hear it, don't you think?'

'Never mind poor Silver Spot, I'm trying to decide who is more horrified by it, Susan, or Miss Cornelia. Look.'

Anne duly turned her head the direction Gilbert's outstretched arm indicated, and laughed herself. 'Neither,' she said with decision, 'it's Cousin Sophia, and that,' poking his ribs, 'you may tie to.'

* * *

Someone meanwhile, John Meredith from the look of it, had had a quiet word with the musicians and they now swapped the giddy rendition of _Which is the Rooster, Which is the Hen_ for the relaxed swell of _And Then My Heart Stood Still_.

'It was rather like that, wasn't it,' said Shirley, reminiscently.

'What was?' Mara said, tilting her head in inquiry.

Shirley nodded in the direction of the musicians where now someone was crooning over the strings;

 _I took one look at you,  
_ _That's all I meant to do_ …

'This,' he said, as they turned the opening arc of a waltz, 'You and I –or it seemed that way. When did you realise?'

Mara laughed. 'Back when you were extracting porcupine quills from That Cat.'

'This would be the cat you have no great love for,' said Shirley mildly, winning more laughter, a sound like a wind chime that rippled in gentle counterpoint to the strings.

'I can't think of another. How was it with you?'

'Rather like the song,' said Shirley, ducking his head, and misstepping a half-bar of the waltz. 'It would have been before Pilgrim and those porcupine quills. I came into Swallowgate only meaning to take stock of the situation –Nan and Di, you know, and how they were faring without Walter, maybe bring an impression of Faith back with me I could put into a letter to Carl. And I don't think I did any of it properly, because somewhere between coming in and sitting down I looked at you and knew I wanted to marry you someday. Is that absurd?'

'Why should it be?'

'It's only –well, because all the time we were growing up, little Rilla, Carl and I, we had Jem and Faith and Jerry and Nan held before us as these great, lasting, immediate loves. Not forgetting Mother and Dad. They all seemed to look at one another and know. Of course, I can't imagine it happened like that, but it seemed that it did. I can remember watching them sweethearting and thinking I'd never know anything comparable. Of course,' brushing a thumb across Mara's cheek, 'that was before I made the mistake of looking at you by firelight and was fairly bewitched.'

'Oh? Is that how you'll tell it in after-years?' said Mara, voice warm.

'That's how it happened.'

 **'** I don't know,' said Mara, 'I think even the most absent-minded of _druidh_ have to mean to do a thing like that.'

'What,' said Shirley, raising an inquisitive eyebrow, 'are they when they're at home then?'

'Witches,' said Mara easily, and there was laughter in her voice when she said, 'it's what you meant, isn't it?'

They were laughing when Gilbert joined them, tapping Mara's shoulder the better to gain her attention. 'I've been wanting to borrow you,' he said, extending his arm. 'May I?'

Shirley said warningly, 'You're going to be quizzed in excruciating detail about that house. Di an I –having never seen it –have faced a barrage of inquiry ever since we alighted the train.' Gilbert affected to look wounded. 'I make a much more interesting conversationalist than that,' he said. 'Anne-girl, you'll vouch for me.'

Anne threaded an arm through her son's and said mildly, 'He has rather got a point, you know –between you and Susan that house has been a pretty well-beat drum.'

'We like to know our people are looked after,' said Gilbert, as Mara took his arm. 'And anyway,' as they negotiated the dance floor, 'it wasn't anything to do with that.'

Opposite him two blue eyes narrowed unmistakably. Mara said easily, 'What about then? The house, incidentally does fine. It's a house. There's not a terrible lot to say on it.'

'You miss the other,' said Gilbert, not making it a question.

'We all do,' said Mara. 'It was home after home -Scotland, rather. You said there was something else?'

'Ah,' said Gilbert, 'yes. About the other thing, actually, though you probably feel that's been talked to death too?'

'It's the season for talking weddings,' said Mara indulgently, 'go on then.'

'Yes, about that,' said Gilbert, as the music struck up again, 'You couldn't have found a solution that ruffled fewer collective feathers?'

'You make it sound as if I had an option,' said Mara, 'once Judith had started on it. I hadn't.'

'Having met Judith Carlisle,' said Gilbert, 'I can almost believe that. I probably would if I'd had that account given to me by Shirley in a letter without ever having so much as met you. The trouble is that I have vivid memories of watching you wrangle with my daughter for the kitchen –and winning where thousands wouldn't. Which makes it hard to believe,' said with a tell-tale Blythe gleam in both eyes, 'that Judith Carlisle could have intervened without a murmur of protest from your side. Unless, of course, you'd resolved to let her.'

'I needn't tell you _I_ wasn't making headway with negotiating details,' said Mara, and they both laughed. 'And I did think you'd maybe like to have your occasion rather than hear about the possibility everlastingly.'

'If it comes to that,' said Gilbert, still with shining eyes, 'there was always Patterson street and a telegram. I'm sure I heard Jem make the odd mention of it when we were up with the others. Only,' rushing on before Mara could make him a reasonably answer, 'that wouldn't have done, would it? Because unless I'm very much mistaken, it isn't only Susan and your mother that wants an occasion.'

'I'd not have said quite that,' said Mara, though even as she said it she inclined her head in acknowledgement of the point, 'I don't nearly mind enough about where and when and all the rest for that. But the weight of it maybe. I should like that.'

The music was winding down, and those that needed it were beating hasty retreats to the side-lines, the better to sit out before the band could strike up again. Already the strings were shifting gently into the somnolent lilt of the _Lippen Schweigen_ , prompting a sudden eddy of Glen gossip as all around people seemed to remember the origins of this much-loved piece, and really, what were the instrumentalists thinking? Gilbert nodded thanks to Mara, and catching Shirley as he recrossed the floor, said lightly, 'This next is for your mother I think. What say, Anne-girl? We can just about run to a waltz, don't you think?

* * *

They saw Rilla and Ken off with congratulatory kisses and jubilant exclamations, Kitty, Jims, and little Bruce running after them with fistfuls of rice, Jims shouting frenetically, 'Wemember to come _back_ , Willa!' his words imperfect in his excitement. The mothers dabbed gently at each other's eyes, and expressed –contrary to appearances –how _glad_ they were to see their children so happy. Susan even forbore to cast aspersions on Toronto and the evils of its citified existence, though Shirley would later find her with her apron over her head having a good weep about how _far_ That Ford Boy had taken their blessed Roly Poly Baby and now they would never see her again, and that they might tie to. And in the meantime –with a Baker sniff that bespoke Susan's restoration to her usual self –they and any children they should be fortunate to have would probably be killed, between the noise and the trams and unwholesomeness of the city, that they would. Jims certainly would , a little Island lad like that. Really, why Leslie –a lovely Island girl if ever there was one –had let Owen Ford whisk the whole family away to That Place was beyond her, really it was.

Several possible answers to this tirade presented themselves to Shirley, all of which he rejected as strongly hinting of insufficient sincerity. 'I suppose,' he said, giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze, 'we shall have to trust to Providence that none of those things happens.'

'Indeed we shall,' said Susan, though she looked as though she thought even Providence might meet with limitations in the face of urbanity. Then she gave another Baker sniff and said suspiciously, ' _You_ aren't thinking of moving anywhere like that, are you, lamb?'

'No,' said Shirley with due solemnity, 'Nothing like that.'


	15. Lives of Quality

_I don't suppose anyone can tell me what happened to February? I think I blinked and somewhere in the changing scenes of life we were into March. Fair_ _warning; I really did intend this a lighthearted story about Afterwards. Apparently I can't write lighthearted, so instead you are getting the second of what must be the world's bleakest three-beat. I can only say it makes solid narrative sense to me, but if you still don't care for death sentence scenes, gloss the end of this chapter, and blame George Gently for its existance. It's his fault I ever got thinking about what happens after you solve a murder._

 _In other news, thank you, as ever, for reading and reviewing._

* * *

Later, the excitement of the day waning, and the sound of Susan's cast-iron skillets still ringing in their ears, Faith told Jem about the baby. He was halfway to sleep at the time, cradled in that murky limbo that is half-nascent sleep, half lingering wakefulness, his eyes heavy and Faith's feet cold against the back of his knees. Hearing her, he clawed his way to wakefulness, fists scrubbing against his eyes. 'Tell me again,' he said, tousled head propped awkwardly against his elbow, the blankets twisted into a spectacular windmill around his person. Faith did so, even as she fought to regain her hair of the blankets. 'Gremlins,' she said, with a tug of the blankets, 'the ones we hadn't planned on,' another tug, 'will presently be added to the collective at Kingsport.' With a wrench the blankets came free. She said, 'Somehow, you and I are going to fit whoever it is - and there _will_ be only the one, please God - around my degree and your murders and will probably know altogether too much about the state of the human body long before walking features.' Jem gave up on sleep. He sat upright and squinting in the dark the better to see her, said, 'Do you mind?'

'Yes,' said Faith, the blankets going lax in her fingers. 'No. I don't know. I hadn't banked on gremlins, if that's what you mean – not quite yet. Mothers are other people. Judith, Nan, Mummy – you know, people who are _there_.'

Experimentally, Jem prodded her between the ribs. 'You do a good impression of being here,' he said, for which cheek Faith's feet retreated from behind his knees and made solid contact with his shins.

'You know what I mean.'

'Mm,' said Jem drowsily. He threaded an arm around her waist and said as he pulled her close, 'I do. I also think there are people who would argue that point with you. Kitty, to start with. Probably Teddy too. I don't exactly get the impression his mother made a career of keeping house after his father was killed.'

'No,' said Faith. 'That's a point, I suppose Teddy can be drafted into gremlin duty for the odd interval, in a pinch.'

'Judging from the strength of his devotion to the gremlins, I hardly think we'll have to impress him on that score,' said Jem. He pulled Faith's head, golden and warm onto his shoulder, where the scent of it, fresh and lemony, encircled him as a cloud.

'And you,' said Faith. There was laughter in her voice, a light rippling like a trill that tickled Jem's collarbone. He said, 'I'm trying to get my head around it. Being responsible for a _whole entire other person_. How do you suppose other people do it?'

'With a tremendous leap of faith, I should imagine,' said Faith, making Jem laugh.

'Luckily,' he said as he fussed with the buttons of her nightdress, 'I have that in spades.'

* * *

There was no keeping a secret of such magnitude at Ingleside. Courtesy of whatever charm it was that saturated the walls, the news was all over the house by morning. Mother was radiant, Dad congratulatory, the twins delighted, and Jims in a fair way to be nonplussed.

'You mean,' he said around a mouthful of oatmeal, 'it will be like when awful Mrs Douglas came to visit and there was all that wailing - _again_?'

Dad duly choked on his coffee, while Mother buried merry eyes in his shoulder, Kitty laughed outright and Jerry, who had begun by laughing, hastily acquired a bad attack of coughing. Susan looked grimly Jims-ward, and was halfway towards the administration of a spanking when Faith recovered sufficiently herself to say, 'Really, Susan, by all accounts Mary's children would try a saint.'

This dissuaded Susan. She sniffed, muttered darkly that Mary Vance had indeed been known to try far more mortal people than saints, and tersely settled for daubing at Jims's oatmeal-spattered mouth with a damp cloth. 'It won't' she said as she ministered to him, 'be like that _at all_.'

'Good,' said Jims with solemnity, and off went the symphony of mirth again over the clink of spoons against bowls and saucers.

* * *

It was no different in Kingsport. They were met off the train by an exuberant Teddy, Geordie, and Judith who took one look at Jem and said, 'Oh, good. I'm allowed know if you do.'

'Sorry,' said Jem, still foggy from travel and an insufficiency of sleep, ' _You_ knew?'

'Well, not really,' Judith mildly said. 'I guessed. But I thought I probably wasn't allowed to know until you did.'

'No,' said Geordie, undertaking to pay the porter, everyone else having become too distracted to notice, 'no, I suggested it might not be politic to speculate. That, my sweet, is not the same thing at all.'

Judith did not deign to answer this, glancingly accepting the kiss Geordie administered to her hair. Instead, she got Faith by one arm, Mara by the other and issued an order-masquerading-as-invitation to dinner for that evening, 'No one feels like cooking after a day on a train,' her justification. No one being able to reasonably contradict her – and Mara gave it a valiant try – they acquiesced with good grace.

* * *

The evening brought them, refreshed, to the Carlisle doorstep, which place they reached by weaving through the circus antics of a tumble of gremlins, minus Teddy, who fell victim to their whim of the moment. Kitty, wielding her elbows to great effect, escaped and was, therefore, attached to Faith's elbow when Judith appeared to answer the summons of their knocking.

Thereafter they passed a civilised evening over casserole and bridge, this after the gremlins had been ritually blessed and sent to bed, and Teddy freed of their clutches. Talk wove effortlessly between their disparate holidays and occasions, the grievances of assorted family, tricks in play, and skimmed lightly off the subject of doomed Alwyn Cressey.

'They're hanging him on Monday next,' said Geordie. Judith had gone to assemble tea, Mara at her elbow. He shuffled the stack of cards in his hand waterfall-fashion and risked a sideways look at Jem. 'Not much of a welcome home, for you, I'm afraid, but – '

'I'll be there,' said Jem. 'Remind me of the time before we go.'

Then Judith was back, her grandmother's silverware gleaming on her arm, sugar-tongs clattering gently against their dish and teaspoons rattling against saucers of Spode Blue Italian stamp. Mara followed, bearing more Blue Italian laden with slices of apple cake and a pastry creation seeping jam, the combined smell of them suggestive of the last, ripe days of summer when late strawberries capitulate to the spice of autumn apple. Heavy and rich in sweetness, the scent competed amicably with the cedarwood smokiness of the fire. It – or perhaps the sound of the Spode platter against the glass of the coffee table – conjured gremlin feet, daringly bare for a January evening, pattering down the stairs. Vainly did Geordie and Judith wave them away; they pleaded their case and Teddy with them. The long and short of it was that they had soon wormed their way onto assorted laps, whence they settled down to gorge themselves on pastry while the others resumed their hands around small, sleep-warm bodies. Nothing more was said about Alwyn Cressey or his doom, until Teddy undertook to whisk sticky-fingered, jam-spattered gremlins to bed, ably assisted by Kitty with an armful of sleeping Tibby, and Jem, Shirley, and Geordie had gained the sanctuary of the study.

* * *

That left the others to clear away the remnants of tea and demolished sweets, Judith observing in the process that the gremlins' ability to get crumbs into hitherto unforeseeable places remained a miracle on the scale of the loaves and fishes to her.

'If you ever discover the root cause of it,' she said to Faith and Mara as she boiled water for the basin, 'you must promise to tell me.'

Laughter all round as the girls shook their heads and declared it an impossibility they should discover anything gremlin-related Judith had not first known. It was Judith's turn to laugh her rippling glissando-like laughter, skin dappled pink from the steam of the kettle. She lifted it from the hob, poured it into the basin, an soap in hand, made a start on the dishes. Her hands were submerged in water as she said, 'While we're on the subject – and for future reference – I'm always here.'

'I was taking that as read,' said Faith, as Mara beat her to the drying of the Blue Italian Spode.

'No,' said Judith, 'I don't mean abstractly here, at this place. I mean where impending gremlins are concerned.'

'Right,' said Faith. She reached for a teaspoon and was this time deflected by Judith, whose soapy hands folded warm and water-soft around hers, curtailing the delicate weave of the dance that was three-at-washing-up. 'I don't care if it's two in the morning and the question sounds idiotic,' she said, 'or if you only want five minutes respite and someone to hold an intelligent non-gremlin conversation with. I don't promise to have all the answers,' here smiling at their evident incredulity, 'but I do remember what it is to be in a place that isn't yours and without your people. So whether it's minding auxiliary gremlins or preserving maternal sanity, you must promise you'll remember. I am here. Speak the word only, and all that.'

'I will never understand,' said Mara, nudging Judith out of the way and taking over the washing, 'how your lot ever looked at that translation and didn't realise it was hopelessly bad English.'

Judith laughed. Faith wanted to, but Judith's hands were still enfolded around hers and the lump in her throat told her she was caught traitorously between laughter and tears. How often, since the realization of motherhood had washed over her, must she have reached for the shape of her mother? Not Rosemary, who was lovely and golden and good, but the encircling warmth and linseed-scent that had been _Mummy_. Nights without number, Faith thought, she must have lain awake and tried to conjure her, the ache of her unreachability gnawing at her, and _I don't know_ discernible in the beats of her heart. And here was Judith, soap on her hands and flushed with the steam of the water and the residual warmth of the oven, offering not a replacement, exactly, but kinship. Faith would have reached for it with both hands, but they were still tucked in Judith's long-fingered ones, so she pressed them instead.

'Thank you,' Faith said, the weight of it a solid thing in her stomach in its sincerity. Even as she said it she had felt the easing of hitherto unrealized knots. She smiled at Judith and said, 'I don't know how you do it, you know. You make it look easy.'

At the sink, Mara hummed distracted agreement as she wrangled with the casserole dish.

Judith said, 'But that's all anyone can hope to do – haven't you realised? No one gets to see the moments at four in the morning when the baby is colicky and the little boys have come down with croup for the third time in as many months. I can't even tell you how we weathered that one because I was too tired to take notes. Jane Gillespie next door might though. I hold her responsible for the preservation of my sanity – so does Geordie.'

Faith had fairly goggled at her. She thought perhaps Mara shared the sentiment; dimly Faith was aware of the sound of the scourer against the casserole dish subsiding and the play Mara's disengaged fingers made across the surface of the water. That there was – had ever been – a version of Judith that was less than terrifyingly efficient in the manipulation of gremlins, her kitchen, Geordie, and possibly the universe was an unrealizable thing. That she herself had a Judith that had smoothed over the nuances of motherhood was still less conceivable.

'Ask her sometime,' said Judith, apparently reading Faith's thoughts in her face and laughing again. 'Ten to one she has hundreds of stories.'

'I think I'd first have to work up the nerve to talk to her,' said Faith, and laughed herself. Hearing her, Judith let go her hands, reciprocally nudged Mara in the direction of the drying rack, and proceeded to reclaim her kitchen sink. Easily came back the patter of washing and drying, the knocking of shoulders and elbows against each other as they wove an impromptu reel of three in a confined space. They began to talk lightly of mundanities, when would spring come and the endless greenery of ordinary time. Somewhere between taking the Spode Platter from Mara and reshelving it on the whatnot, it came home to Faith for the first time since Miri and the ether, and the bustle of holidays that this was perhaps another adventure like any other, to be tackled by her and Jem. She thought they could probably run to that.

* * *

Sunday found the Larkrise party – Teddy excepted – at the little Patterson street church, white, bright and gleaming in the sunlight and teeming with people as Jem hadn't seen it in years.

'Relatives come in for a baptism?' asked Kitty brightly, so that Jem began to laugh, and feeling Faith's elbow at his funny bone, abruptly swapped it for coughing.

'Little Edward Connover,' said Naomi Blake, by way of answer as she issued them orders of service. 'You'll remember him?'

In the time it took for Jem to conjure the big-headed, ruddy-cheeked Connover baby, he lost Faith to the throng of what he supposed was the current set of girls who pinned hopes, as she lingered to quiz Naomi, Jocasta and their contemporaries on the state of the Swallowgate shepherdesses, coursework, and sleep. He placed her by their laughter, golden in the mid-morning sunlight as it slanted in rainbows through the high windows, and then felt the clutch of Faith's arm through his elbow as she caught him up.

'All well?' asked Kitty brightly.

'The shepherdesses are depleted, Augie and Buffy still sit on the mantle, no one has called it an evening this side of midnight since this time last year, and their doing their coursework between dances and socials at the schools,' said Faith. Then she grinned and with much satisfaction said, 'In other words, everything is exactly as it should be.' Somehow they muscled their way through the influx of visiting Connover relatives to their usual pew, where Shirley, arriving early, had managed to keep a space for them. He raised his eyebrows slightly on sight of Kitty, but only because she was doing a credible imitation of a hurricane, Jem thought. She barrelled her way into the spot next to Faith, where she sat, legs swinging, and commenced a perusal of the psalter.

'They're all metric, naturally,' said Jem.

'You'd rather they weren't?' Jem half expected her to whip out pencil and paper there among the pews, using the psalter for an improvised desk, it sounded so like an interview question. If it came to that, he _did_ wish they weren't. The one book in all the Bible –short of Job –where you could really get angry with God, and they'd gone and made it neat, measured, and rhyming. Only this wasn't the place, what uncle Jo up at the front in his stole, greeting people by the door, and aunty Phil pressing metrical psalters on anyone that would have them. He must have looked it too, because Kitty relaxed against the back of the pew and said, apparently earnestly, 'Sorry. It's only that I've missed this.'

'What, you mean there wasn't enough of church in the Glen?' said Jem, but Kitty shook her head and gestured at the pew.

' _This_ ,' she said.

It dawned on Jem what she meant somewhere between the organ's striking up of _He Who Would True Valiant Be_ and the uncle Jo's rambling extemporisation on Epiphany as a season of fulfilment and promises, what Kitty had meant. _This._ Less the theology, he realised, as he tracked his former patients around the church, more the togetherness of the place. There was Tilly Lyons of the everlasting perscriptions, and little Katy Connover, none the worse for that far-distant scalding, running up and down the aisles with glad abandon, while Mac looked dourly on. A few rows ahead of them was Dr. Cressey, head bowed, giving the sermon still less attention than even he himself was – and who could blame him? It came home to Jem as he looked between them, the colleagues and patients of his brief stint at the hospital, how easily he could have let this Sunday habit go with the office in the university medical building. Faith wouldn't have minded, he thought. But how would he have accounted for that to all these good people? Or found out how little Katy Connover had fared, or that Tilly Lyons still wore that absurd hat with the stuffed pheasant for Sunday wear? Little things, and yet they conjured home for him as surely as did Kitty's shout as she came hurtling through the door, Teddy's Sunday roasts and the lemon-rinse of Faith's hair as she nestled against him of an evening, burrowed deep in the country fair quilt . Then the organ swelled ponderously into _All People that on Earth Do Dwell_ and they were processing the bible out, Jonas Blake on its heels, the Connover adults half a pace behind him, with a writhing Edward Connover, quite dwarfed by his trailing christening gown and wailing mightily.

'Poor things,' said Kitty, _sotto voce_ , 'he can't have liked that much. I know _I_ shouldn't, being doused unexpectedly with water.'

'It's supposed to be a good thing,' said Shirley, 'the devil making his exit or something.'

'That's _never_ a Susanism,' said Faith.

'Definitely not,' said Jem, 'or if it is, it's one I've not heard, and I'd swear I've heard them all.'

'Can you do that here?' said Kitty, incorrigible as ever. 'Swear, I mean?'

Faith's foot caught the tender spot in Jem's ankle and he valiantly fought back the urge to laugh. When, he wondered, did Kitty ever leave off the newspaper business? But then he shook his head; no doubt this was what made her good at it. They shuffled duly out into the narthex, and then into the courtyard, where the sun streamed clear and white amid the crisp, late-morning cold.

'Coffee through in the hall,' uncle Jo was saying to the knot of people ahead of them, 'do join us.'

'Anyone you want to catch up with?' asked Jem, turning to Faith.

'Not today,' said Faith, 'I'm running on an insufficiency of sleep. I think we all are. But if I don't it will get 'round the village faster than racing demon that I've snubbed the refreshment committee my first Sunday home, and what else can you expect from women doctors? So I think I'd better. They're going to want to know what Father thinks of Unna taking up with that mission school of Rev Jo's when it finally opens in September, and if I think it really _will_ open – which, by the by, I take generous leave to doubt, the way the Secretariat are going – and if Carl is really determined to stop her going alone. Also what use I think he'll be to my baby sister with the one good eye for seeing. It will be brutal, and probably I will narrowly avoid bloodshed, but I've got to be there. You and Kitty do what you will, though. No one casts these things up to _you_.'

'Kitty, meanwhile was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, whether from cold or excitement was unclear to Jem. 'They must be absolutely _full_ of news after the holiday. I've missed so much, you know…'

'Right, that's Kitty along with you then, darling,' said Jem, deciding on excitement.

It was too cold to stand idly chatting on the church steps, and in any case, they were by way of causing a traffic jam. Already they had been half-trampled by the children of the parish, ably lead by Katy Connover. Jem took Shirley's arm through his and said, as an afterthought, 'Unless you've a taste for joining them?'

'No thanks. That's a three-quarter-hour commitment I'd rather not embark on. They'll have heard by now about Judith taking over wedding plans, and explaining to all and sundry why what was already a mixed wedding is now being organized by a mostly-Anglican to the grief of assorted matriarchs is something I'd rather not attempt. If there's anything especially gripping to report back, Kitty will set me right.'

They wended their way carefully down the hill into the town centre, mindful of the slurry of mud and snow. The wind had picked up, and was blowing sharp across the sea, the air full of the mixed smells of salt, cold, cedar and cooking dinners.

'How,' said Jem now to Shirley as they went, the church behind them, 'do you make it all fit? I mean, it isn't all empty ritual with you, is it?'

'What?' said Shirley, perplexed.

'This,' said Jem, waving a hand backward in the direction of the whitewashed church with its leaning spire. 'The world's in pieces and all the rest, but you still think there's sense in it, am I wrong?'

'No.'

'Then how do you make it fit?'

Shirley shook his head, and then for good measure, shrugged. 'Well, you can't touch the wind, can you?'

Jem blinked, confusion as much as the cold stinging his eyes.

'Augustine,' said Shirley, 'I think.'

Jem raised a surprised eyebrow. 'That sounds, if possible, more Roman than the bit about devils and baptisms.'

'Yes, well,' said Shirley with a shrug, 'if Judith Carlisle can be Anglican in theology and not otherwise, I feel I can reasonably abandon the Elect. They never made any sense in the first place.'

That won a laugh from Jem, though he shortly regretted it as the cold registered painfully against his soft palate. 'What, and hobgoblins and incense do?'

In the ensuing silence Jem thought he had perhaps tread across some thin, invisible line. But then Shirley said, 'If you tell me you don't do your share of looking to Faith for direction, I won't believe you.'

Unable to argue the point, Jem could only shake his head. Shirley smiled, a quiet, close-lipped smile, but that reached his eyes even so. He said, 'The trouble with you is that you want to see and touch everything for answers, whereas some things just are. Do you know what I mean?' Apparently deciding Jem didn't, Shirley said more expansively, 'Instinctive things, like breathing, the sort of thing you can't explain but do anyway.'

'I _can_ explain breathing.' Jem was indignant. 'The diaphragm –'

Before Jem could progress further in this treatise, Shirley swatted his arm. 'Never mind about breathing.' He was almost laughing. 'The way Mother and Catkin write, I guess I mean, or Faith heals people –or you bring them justice.'

'Hm,' said Jem. He kicked a stone out of their path.

'You do, you know,' said Shirley. 'It's a needful thing, your work.'

'It wasn't supposed to be,' Jem said. 'After the war.'

'People don't work like that. You just said yourself, the world's still in pieces. At least your way we stand a chance of getting back to what was.'

'Do you think we can, then?' asked Jem. They had rounded the corner to Larkrise and began now to ascend the walk to it, their breath misting in fine puffs of steam before their eyes that prickled and cooled their skin. 'You and I?' said Shirley, 'I don't know. I shouldn't think so, any more than we can go backwards to any other life crossing. But someone else might –Nan and Jerry's girls say, or the gremlins, yours too, if it comes to that – Teddy and Kitty too; they'll have their disparate Rainbow Valleys –and no Piper.'

'Yes,' said Jem, his throat oddly tight at the invocation of that old ghost, 'I suppose, for that, you might even say it was worth it.'

* * *

Still, it was a difficult thing to sit down to that Sunday's roast, though the chicken Teddy had left in the oven had browned and crisped to a nicety. More difficult still, the breakfast he conjured on Monday morning, with its coppery savour of blood pudding, and the butteriness of the eggs. Jem thought he had almost got used to the bone-deep bleakness of the grey doomsdays since the demise of Lowry, but he had yet to learn to meet them on a full stomach.

Geordie's knock at the door, strange in its formality, was a welcome diversion. They walked mutely to the prison with its worn grey walls, and tread the old path down the narrow corridors. Strange to think this had become habit. Uncle Jo met them with a nod and a smile that was half-apology, half gratitude. Alwyn Cressey looked impossibly young, to Jem's mind. He must be nearer Kitty's age than Teddy's and yet – Jem thought of Henderson, who they had plucked from the ice mid-snowstorm and shook his head. That too, was an impossible thing. The man in the grey flannel, whose name Jem still did not know, had begun on the sentence. He sounded tired. Perhaps he was. It was, after all, very early of a Monday morning. And then Jo, gentle and lamblike as ever, with a grace and the Lord's Prayer. The words came easier, now, Jem thought, though there was nothing easy about the rest – the linen and the trembling boy -Alwyn Cressey, he must not forget the name. He was still warm when Jem came forward with Geordie and Jo, and soothed him to stillness.

Only afterwards, as they stood blinking in the sunlight, did he catch old Dr. Cressey standing by the wrought-iron gate, squinting upwards into the sunlight, craning for a sight of the black flag. Jem raised his eyes and just caught it, a fine dark banner like a starling against the sun. Without thinking to do it, Jem raised the doctor a salute. Then, nodding to Geordie, _wait for me_ , he closed the distance between them, and took the older man's hand in his, the gesture all apology. _We had to do it_ there in the press of palm to worn, blistered palm.

'Was he very afraid?' asked Dr. Cressey, and Jem thought of the boy – how old? – long-limbed and shivering, and could not say it.

'No,' said Jem. 'He was many things – brave, gracious, sorry, but not that.'

'Thank you,' said Dr. Cressey, and released Jem's hands, he was off.

* * *

He told Faith about it properly at Larkrise, the morning sun streaming through the windows like ribbons. Teddy was manning the phone at the station house, and Kitty following up whatever lead the coffee hour of yesterday had yielded her. Faith was tucked up in the lionshead chair, improbably small amidst its tracery, a mug of strong-smelling tea in her hands. There was a spare mug on the low coffee table, and seeing Jem she offered it to him. It was stewed to an unholy level Jem suspected was intended for reviving the dead rather than sustaining the living, and the steam had long since ceased rising from it. Jem gulped it gratefully, and said, 'He wanted to know how he died. Dr. Cressey. 'I said he'd died well,' said Jem, and swallowed another mouthful of tea. It lingered long in the mouth, tannin-rich and bitter. 'And it's not that he didn't, but the whole ordeal is bloody awful. Grim, and sere – the air is close and the room is small – it's enough to make my time in the camp look positively sunny.'

'I know,' said Faith.

'And all I could think,' said Jem, between greedy mouthfuls of tepid tea, 'was how it would be if it had been one of ours. If for some lunatic reason they got hold of Teddy or Kitty, or whoever that is,' this with a nod in the direction of Faith's midsection, 'and could I have stood there like a poker as he did, waiting hellishly.'

'I know,' said Faith again.

'Sorry,' Jem said, 'It's hellish for you too, of course it must be. Stupid of me to forget. I keep forgetting I needn't crawl away to a corner and stick it out alone.'

'No,' said Faith. 'Nan had it about right, I think, naming Miri the way she did. It's a brave new world, and we'll build it, and weather it, together.'

'Good,' said Jem. He gave up on the tea and climbed with difficulty into the lionshead chair and onto her lap. 'In that case, here's my corner, and I've come to hide.'


	16. The Persistence of Love

_You have no idea the times I considered scrapping this completely and making us all leap ahead to chapter 17, seeing as it would write and this wouldn't. Thank you, as always for reading, reviewing and your everlasting patience. Now that I have time spare to write, of course the chapters are recalcitrant. Murphy's law is in good working order, here in Canada!_

* * *

As ever, after the closure of a station house case, the building subsided into quietude, punctured here and there by the scratching of pen nibs as they wrote reports, the shuffling of papers and shunting of drawers as those reports were filed, and the ringing of the telephone to pass along such mundanities as the theft of a twenty-pound bag of birdseed ('For what birds?' a perplexed Teddy demanded of Benwick) or the appearance of a 'suspicious personage' outside the butcher's for the sixth time that week ('The new delivery boy,' said an exasperated Benwick on his return from addressing the issue).

 _Iolanthe_ was Geordie's idea. He sprung it on Jem as he signed off on the death-by-misadventure of one Robert Garrick. He rapped Jem smartly on the shoulder with the tickets and Jem, seeing them, said, 'Have the gremlins got croup, measles, or something else entirely on this occasion?'

 _'_ None of the above,' said Geordie. 'They're being minded by Teddy. We're doing this your way, as you were so determined Judith and I wouldn't be treading on toes.'

'Thank goodness for that,' said Jem.

The news thereafter found its way back to Larkrise, where Faith, Mara and Di were foregathered at the spindly-legged table parsing the latest news of Ingleside. Rilla and Ken were due back from Europe in a matter of weeks and Susan was refusing to relinquish Jims. She was also, the way Anne Blythe reported it, apostrophizing on the attendant perils of Nan and Jerry taking the little girls back to Quebec, by boat no less. 'Never mind,' Di said, 'that they _got_ to the Island by boat in the first place.'

'That's never the same,' said Mara. 'She was with them then. And if Susan can't see them safe, they'll be beset with dooms.'

Into this amicable disarray with its clutter of letter paper and savour of Darjeeling spices, came Judith, with fair warning of an evening brimful of magic, enchantments and a healthy dose of the ridiculous.

'I seem to recall,' she said, accepting a piece of the Morris-stamp bone china, 'that a faery parliament is involved.'

'Oh good,' said Faith. 'At least,' with a look at Mara, 'you and I can go into this one _expecting_ the completely nonsensical. That will be a first.'

Mara said, 'I don't know. I make faery parliaments more gothic that whimsical.'

'I was forgetting that of course you'd been steeped in the stuff,' said Faith, laughingly.

'As was I,' said Judith.

' _How_ ,' said Di, rising, 'you managed that, I don't know. But I'll leave you to debate the point. _The Chronicle_ is finishing with the old library today, and I'll hear about it if I'm not ready in the wings to do the photos.'

Deftly she wove her way around the narrow edge of the table, regathering her share of the letters as she went. Judith followed not long after, having promised to retrieve the gremlins from Jane Gillespie in time for that woman's Bridge Club. Mara would have gone with her, but Faith caught her elbow and stopped her. She said, 'It's been like stepping into yesterday, all the girls who pin hopes in the same place – or as many of us as can be mustered – talking letters. I'm enjoying it. Don't you vanish too. It wasn't all that long ago we used to swap round gowns for an evening out, do you remember? I bet – at least for the present – you and I still run to it.'

'As if I'd forget,' said Mara, laughingly. She had half-risen, teapot in hand, to clear the table before leave-taking. Now she let Faith tug her back into place. THe motion sent little spurts of residual tea spurting from the spout of the teapot like watery amber sunbeams. With the arm not wrapped in Faith's fingers, Mara daubed at them with a handkerchief.

She said, 'It was always _my_ productions you were making ready for, Parrot, or have you forgotten?'

They were still laughing and remembering when Teddy bobbed into the house briefly to say he would be all evening at the Carlisle House and could someone see that a meal was left out for Kitty? Accordingly Mara conjured rice pudding – the favourite Swallowgate emergency meal, Faith recalled – and sheltered it under a tea towel to preserve some of the warmth. She herself excavated the old wardrobe with its cedar-and-musk perfume in search of a dress that would suit Mara. Faith had been right; they could still trade off clothing with ease. The smell of rice pudding drifted up the stairs, milky, warm and comforting as an eiderdown. It wrapped tendril-like around the girls as they hunted gloves, scarves and all those auxiliary details evenings out entailed. It was good to laugh and tease and pin hair for one another again without the long shadow of war or the stresses of coursework hanging over them.

'Though _why_ ,' Faith said, weaving a crown out of Mara's plait and wishing – not for the first time – for Una's dexterity, 'we can't have a normal evening out is anyone's guess.'

'We've tried normal evenings,' said Mara reasonably. 'They don't take. They end in my taking over your bridge hand and Di telling us of Catkin's wedding by candlelight at the Glen St. Mary Manse. Here, let me do that, _a charaid._ ' In acrobatic gesture that mystified Faith, Mara reached for and extracted the last of the pins from Faith's fingers.

'That was once,' said Faith, stubbornly. She made no protest about relinquishing the pins to Mara's long fingers though. Gratefully Faith sat down on the edge of the bed to nurse her own pinpricked hands and watched, fascinated as Mara secured the last of the pins. She made it look _easy_.

'And the other evening?' said Mara, voice warm with contained laughter. 'That was normal? Teddy and the gremlins set up Mah-jong, could make no sense of it, and gave it up. We tried with it to no better result, and took up Hearts while, in a meanwhile bit, Kitty rewrote the rules and Teddy tried to read them while the gremlins made a climbing tree of him. We then gave up on Hearts in favour of politics. That almost worked until you and Jem started on some medical discovery the rest of us couldn't parse – '

'Insulin,' said Faith, brightening. 'It will – '

'Make no more sense to me on the second telling, Parrot,' said Mara before Faith could hit full stride. 'And all that was _before_ Tibby tried to eat the cards and Kitty to quiz all and sundry on precinct matters. No, it's a safe bet you and I wouldn't know what to do with a normal evening did one land in our laps.'

They were laughing when the others called for them. It had begun to snow since Di's departure; it muted their footfalls and misted their breath, here and there penetrating coat sleeves and imperfectly wrapped scarves. It was natural, once they had cleared the security of the wood, to divide into pairs and shelter in the enhanced warmth of close contact, gloved hands folded into robustly mittened ones and arms coiled around waists as flame around kindling. The stars came through the veil of the snow like so many winking iridescences. No one spoke, each being too taken up in their own thoughts, though Jem occasionally risked punctuating the satin silence of it with whistled snatches of music remembered from previous outings, subsiding only in the face of the others amicable teasing.

They met the Carlisles in the courtyard of the little theatre. It was a cold, clear evening with a moon like a pearl that washed the cobbles in a sheen of white splendour and rendered the surrounding snow bluish to look at. The little brass band had run away with a theme and variation on _Felix the Cat_ that bristled with a brashness and giddiness no self-respecting cat would have tolerated. Around the ornate doors and just beyond them, fine-feathered women in sheathes of fabric and men with winter greenery pinned to their lapelled buzzed and hummed like bees.

Somehow Geordie's exclamatory welcome carried over this glad riot. Judith's greeting was milder; she raised a gloved hand in salutation and pulled Faith and Mara into a hug. 'Oh good,' she said, releasing them, 'sensible people to talk with,' before steering them away from the others. If Shirley protested that they were leaving him stranded with good-natured lunatics, it went unnoticed.

* * *

Gilbert and Sullivan's idea of the faery, it emerged with the overture, was more Andrew Lang, less the meddlesome, vaguely sinister creatures Mara and Poppy had been used to conjure for the others in Swallowgate days. None of that stopped Geordie expostulating valiantly on the influence of such recognizable names as Wagner and Mendelssohn on the music. If he was right the others never knew. They were too taken up in the spectacle of an exuberant chorus wielding gauzy scarves and pointed feet slipping skip-change across the stage as it sang; _Tripping hither, tripping thither_ with ebullience, _nobody knows why or wither_ …The sound of it at once gossamer-light and jocund.

'Well that's all right then,' whispered Jem in Faith's ear. 'Sort of a relief to hear no one else has the least idea what we're supposed to be doing now, too, wouldn't you say?'

Faith crammed gloved fingers to her mouth to stem her mirth; they tasted of old finery and the cloves lining her glove box. Mutely she shook her head. When the fit of laughter had subsided she said, 'I was thinking how like our mad, glad revels of years ago the faery parliament was.'

Jem turned forcibly from the spectacle of Faith in her relaxed elegance in the interests of squinted up at the whirl of pastels and swirling scarves that adorned Iolanthe's faery court. Had they ever been as blithely unconcerned as this troupe of feys? But then he thought of the Harbour Light, of a stolen waltz through a cramped kitchen as Faith's good red taffeta swept dangerously near to a fire, the smell of scorching fabric and rose water on her skin, the way it had tasted to on his lips, and thought perhaps they had. In any event, there was no time to argue, the music came washing over him like a wave, nonsensical, certainly, and soap-bubble-thin on plot, but a welcome relief after the sobriety of young Cressey's sentence. So it had made no sense. Neither did this. Neither, on recollection, had that bygone prohibition of minister's children dancing and the lengths they had gone to to circumvent it. He wouldn't swap this, he thought, drinking in the music and the crispness of the rose-water Faith wore now, any more than he would the snatched intervals of yesteryear. The peers loomed on stage in clomping boots and brass-spangled uniforms and Jem found himself thinking that perhaps, after all, in the right places, senselessness was forgivable.

* * *

'Do you know,' said Mara as she and Shirley left the others at the turn for Evensong, 'every time I think Geordie's musical selections can't grow stranger, they do.'

'I seem to remember you telling me not to set the world that challenge,' said Shirley, and grinned. 'Do you remember?'

'Rather different circumstances,' said Mara. 'You were talking about world affairs at the time. There was a war on.'

'Even so. It was obviously pertinent advice. And anyway,' as they rounded the approach to the house, 'I have considerably more time for this evening's offering than I have the others.'

Even deep in the conifer-rich walk with its mixture of cedar spice, tart, resinous pines and woodsy balsams on the air, Shirley was acutely aware of Mara's scrutiny in the dark. It was impossible not to be; her fingers were folded still around the crook of his elbow, his skin running hot and then cold where her breath brushed close against it.

'You're never telling me you've gone and acquired a taste for it too,' said Mara now. 'That's all we need.'

'Hardly. It was the theme as much as anything. All those years of catching charms and superstitions off you – the air was alive with them. The music had perhaps half my attention at any given moment.'

'And the other half?'

After all evening spent in heightened awareness of her, the impossible thing was cleaving to civilities. It seemed the door had hardly shut of its own volition when Shirley turned to her, meaning to take her coat and kissed her instead. Coats and gloves followed duly, Mara's hands winding around his neck, the crescents of her nails lacinating the skin there. He'd have felt the sting of them if he'd stopped to think of it. As it was, Shirley brought a had around her to cushion the arch of her neck and thought if nothing else he ought to at least settle her comfortably.

He opened his mouth to say so and was stopped by the kiss she gave him back, the heat and sweetness of it like fondant. He gathered her trembling, into his arms and never afterwards could account for how they closed the space between those first frenetic minutes in the hall with its light squibs and shadows, and the sanctity of Mara's room, where Pilgrim was keeping his own inky, feline vigil on the windowsill. They must have done though, because it was as Shirley lay with her enfolded in his arms, the old Steps to the Altar quilt smooth over the bed, that he pressed a kiss to the back of Mara's neck, tasted the salt and jasmine of her there, and said, 'I suppose you'll have had your share of kisses over the years.'

'I wouldn't say that quite.'

'No?'

'No. There's a fair leap between seven and twenty is there not?'

'Seven?' said Shirley, incredulous.

'Mm. Nothing that mattered – you know what children are at that age.'

'Apparently not.'

The curtains with their sprigged rosebud pattern were drawn imperfectly across the windows. By the finger of moonlight that filtered golden and rose-stamped across the room, Mara turned towards him, and peering closely at him said, 'Ring games and all the rest – they always seemed to end with a kiss. Did yours not then?'

'Not exactly.'

'You'll forgive me if I fail to see how it can be done by half measures,' said Mara, voice warm with amusement.

'You know an awful lot about it.'

'We weren't talking of that,' said Mara, not arguing. She relaxed her posture and curled up silent, on her side, content apparently to wait.

'It was the only time I was ever sent home from school,' said Shirley into the silence. Mara hummed acknowledgment of this but still said nothing. Shirley said, 'We were playing at _Green Gravel_ or something. The girls' idea, presumably, because I hated – what did you call them?'

'Ring games,' said Mara. 'So far it hardly sounds an especially egregious crime.'

'Yes, well that was all Dotty Harmer's fault,' said Shirley. 'She chose me to go round the circle with and I hit her for her trouble.'

'Why on earth,' laughter bubbling gently behind Mara's words, 'should you do that?'

'Because the rules said you had to kiss the person who chose you,' this as if it were obvious.

'And Dotty Harmer was so awful?'

'No,' not looking at her. 'It seemed disloyal to Susan to kiss anyone else.'

With effort Mara supressed her laughter, difficult because Shirley's hands were idly tracing concentric circles across the expanse of her abdomen.

'In that case, consider me suitably aware of the concession you've made these last few years.'

Shirley ignored this. He said, 'Your turn then. You were seven?'

'Yes, and playing at Glasgow Ships. Archie Buchanan cornered me down by the harbour pier. I don't particularly recall I felt the need to hit him for the liberty of it either – though that might have come of not having a Susan to cleave to.'

Shirley did laugh. He said, 'This would have been in Anchorage days?'

'No,' said Mara, 'At home – Scotland. Though it can't have been long afterwards we moved.'

Her laughter of earlier had ebbed, and she sounded suddenly drowsy. Shirley eased the pins from her hair and said as he combed it to neatness between his fingers, 'You've called it that before.'

'Have I?'

'Yes. I begin to think we must go see it.'

'I'd like that,' said Mara, and shifted in place so that her head rested against his shoulder.

'I thought perhaps you would,' said Shirley, with a kiss for her forehead. She still smelled faintly of the fragtance of the woods, the cedars and pines where they had brushed against her skin, anticipating his kisses. The scent if it combined with the jasmine he associated with her, the iris-and-orange of her perfume, still in evidence, last traces of it prickling tart against his lips. 'Say for a honeymoon?'

'Could we?' asked Mara, startling, half-raising her head to look at him properly. She had stifled her humour earlier, he knew. Shirley hid a smile in her hair and said, 'Of all the risks we've taken, you and I, this is the one you baulk at?'

'Not quite,' said Mara. 'Only that I've missed it.'

'I know,' said Shirley, voice soft, still stroking her hair. 'You loved it once – and I should like to see it. You'll show it to me?'

'Gladly,' Mara said.

* * *

March came in like a lamb, shockingly mild after what had begun to seem an unending winter. If the melting snow brought cries of dismay from gremlins with a taste for sledding, the adults saw it go without a pang. It was good to step outside without gloves and smell the first nascent greenery in bud. Better to feel the warmth of the sun seeping generously across the earth, hardening the mud and warming upturned faces as they marvelled at the unfolding verdure, unbelieving as the tremulous choir of bluebirds and young robins. Best of all was waking up to a pinking sky again, and feeling the days stretch incrementally longer. Pavements grew sunbaked and flowers unfurled, here the button-like coltsfoot, there tart-smelling garlic mustard, now and then the odd, emboldened cluster of wood and grape hyacinth. Winter Aconite – origin untraceable – appeared pinned to Di's hat, a source of much speculation until Kitty spotted their double in a pottery jar at Evensong, whence Mara said they had arrived by way of family. There being only so many familial acquaintances Mara and Di shared, and Shirley being disinclined to take credit for the existence of Winter Aconite anywhere, there were, as Kitty put it, not many suspects worth considering.

'Though why,' said Faith to the others over tea, ' _you're_ not allowed to know about it, Ariel, if they are from Alastair – which seems beyond likely, I don't know.'

Mara shook her head and said, 'Did you say? When it was you, I mean?'

'No,' said Faith. 'I never had to. The way I remember it, Una guessed.'

'Of course Una did,' said Mara, 'You look the way you feel nine times in ten. But I meant Catkin and Di, as it happens. I don't suppose your first course of action was to rush up to Ingleside and tell them you and Jem were walking out?'

'Well, no,' said Faith, conceding the point as Mara replenished tea all round. 'But not out of any decorous reason. It seemed so obvious.'

'There you are then.'

Kitty, nibbling sparrow-fashion at a biscuit, said, 'But this _isn't_ obvious – we've had to piece everything together like one of your quilt tops,' with a nod towards Mara.

'Of course we have,' said Mara, 'we always have with Di – that's nothing new. And the day Alastair tells me anything without it being akin to my pulling a tooth will be the day the sun runs cold.'

Teddy laughed. He said, 'I recall Nan writing that she thought your Mouse had been wrong about the pair of you playing at matchmaking – but you've never left it off, have you?'

Faith shook her head. She said, 'No one ever pretended to. And anyways, we're in good company. Neither has Mother Anne, and it would be churlish not to watch for snippets of romance to pass on to her.'

* * *

Carl Meredith, meanwhile, was reported by an exasperated sister to lose hours without end to lying on the muddied ground among the new grasses hunting little things with too many legs that danced ticklishly down her arms then found their way into her Domestic Science projects. As far as Una Meredith was concerned, the tribulations of Secretariat politics and wrangling with the United Church over Rev. Blake's proposed Mission School would be a welcome change. At least Elders and Secretariats – unlike centipedes – harboured no surprises for her.

Teddy, encouraged by the mood of the season, had begun to ask all manner of impossible gremlin-related questions. The concern foremost in this preoccupation was names. 'They've got to have them, you know,' he said, time and again. Faith, who had not got so far in the finalising of details as to settle on anything so irrevocable as a name, deflected him with news offerings form home. Presently it was an update from Rilla, now installed in Toronto with Ken and Jims and, to hear her on the subject, thriving.

 _We took Jims down to the market the other day – Kensington, you know – and he went quite_ _mad_ _for it. Though he did give me a terrible fright by haring off to places unknown. I turned my back for a_ _minute_ _to inspect a green brocade ribbon I wanted to trim a hat with, and when I turned around again, he wasn't there! I must have looked everywhere for him, and couldn't find him – and didn't all Susan's forebodings come back to me! (_ _Don't_ _tell her!) His being snatched, mauled by an automobile or trampled by the masses all passed before my eyes, only for him to reappear with a smile half a mile wide at least, chattering nineteen words to the dozen. He'd only gone and found the one fishmonger that sold_ _eel_ _. Jellied, live, pickled… just about any way you could fancy it, they had it – and weren't they delighted in Jims's enthusiasm._ _I_ _was not, as you may imagine, for I now have a jar of jellified eel sitting in the jam closet (again, do_ _not_ _let on to Susan! !) and how I shall explain_ _that_ _to the Mothers' Union when they come for tea next week I don't know. I think I shall really have to cite Jims's English heritage, as it seems quite churlish to blame Miranda, when she was only adhering the best way she could to that idiotic rule of the Junior Reds' about Eats at a gathering_.

Here Faith perforce had to stop for a laughter that was infectious. Jem had collapsed against her shoulder and was presently sobbing with mirth in a fashion likely to leave a stitch in his side. Teddy, having forsaken his chess-game with Kitty, was grinning without much understanding the reason, and Mara, who had dropped in with news of Poppy, only shook her head.

'You _must_ ,' she said now, 'explain Rilla and the eels to me. The time I had dissuading you of having them at her wedding, it's only fair.'

'You wouldn't relent on that one,' said Faith.

'Well, no. The thought of staging an invasion of Susan's kitchen at the height of one of her occasions, all in the name of a joke I didn't grasp was a bit much.'

Di said, 'Did Catkin really not share that letter? It was riotously funny. Little Rilla at her hyperbolic best.'

'I'd remember eels,' said Mara with conviction. 'That's entirely too singular an event not to stick.'

Di and Faith then proceeded to trip over themselves in the explanation, difficult because the memory of it was infected with its original humour. Between tears of laughter and gasps for breath they got out a story sufficient for Teddy, Mara and Kitty to piece together something about a Junior Reds event Rilla had hosted in which eels had featured with abnormal prominence.

'Jims loved them,' said Di. 'No one else knew what to do with them – he wouldn't eat anything else for weeks, the way Mums' letter told it.'

'I see.'

'I'm glad you do,' said Teddy. 'Because I don't. The idea of eel – _jellied_ – is too awful.'

'Pickled sounds worse,' said Kitty.

'There's nothing wrong with eel,' said Mara, 'in a pinch. Though why you would jelly it…'

'I'm starting to remember,' said Di, 'why you never saw that letter. There was a recipe enclosed. Catkin probably thought we'd end by eating it.'

Faith grimaced, picked up the letter again, and there followed a saner, if still gushing, account of the Mothers' Union, Rosedale Presbyterian Church, and the story Ken was writing up on the police. _Not at all like the people Jem works with, I think_ , was Rilla's opinion. _They're supposed to be terribly corrupt, with all manner of subterranean dealings, or something. Susan's quite convinced the writing of the story will have us all murdered in our beds, but it doesn't_ _seem_ _likely_.

Faith looked up in time to catch Teddy elbowing Kitty back into alertness, it being her turn to neglect the chess game. Sluggishly she turned back to it and said, 'Why don't _we_ ever get stories like that?'

'You wouldn't like us to be brokering deals with criminals, surely, Kitten?' said Teddy. Kitty was indignant. Di said, 'It's all the endless cups of tea, Teddy, not you. We're tired of making them. Landing a story like that would staunch them nicely. Or at least provoke one of the _men_ to offering to make them.'

'In that case,' said Faith, 'we'd better gloss the end of this letter. Rilla does rather a good line in endless cups of tea. What else is there?'

Di rifled in her skirt pocket and came up with another letter.

'Word from Catkin,' she said. 'They're back at Innisfree after a crossing that would have turned Jem a vast palate of greens, apparently.'

'Innisfree?' said Jem for all of them.

'Catkin's name for the cottage, I take it,' said Mara. Di nodded. 'It's definitely a Nanism. Though _why_ , when it doesn't sound like they mean to stay…'

She left the thought unfinished and started on the letter.

 _The little girls have become positively chatty since you last saw them, albeit in a language of their own devising. Miri particularly is opinionated. I don't know what trick Faith worked there, but whatever it was, it came off with flying colours. Apparently, having spent the first weeks of her life putting the fear of God into all of us, Miri is set on making up for lost time an now holds whole parliaments with everything from the rafters to the sprays of freesia on the kitchen table. Mandy, by comparison, is quite content to lie on the crib quilt Susan gifted her for Christmas and watch the baby sparrows through the window. They're at that funny downy, tufted brown stage, and hop absolutely everywhere, though their favourite place is under the red canoe. We're all (well, Jerry and I) rather afraid that a cat or something will come stalking through the long grass and catch them before they get their wings, but so far so lucky._

 _In less maternal news, Lord Harrington is proving more stubborn than a very stubborn thing. The point of Miss Selina Spark was always to be his match, but just at the moment I think I may have written the only person into creation as stubborn as he is, and how I'm ever to bring them together is anyone's guess. It wants at least another book – possibly two. She must learn to receive graciously, and he to humble himself, and I may as well ask for a month of Sundays while I'm at it. It's the likelier thing to happen – believe me._

 _Not, of course, that writing at two in the morning between feedings is helping much. It was always Faith and Ariel who could write intelligent-sounding stuff at gone four in the morning and then wake up in time for a 9 o'clock lecture as if those were normal hours to keep._

'It _was_ normal,' said Mara, her voice rich and warm with humour, 'when you have a care for all the essay-writing, Red Cross sessions and lectures we contended with.'

Faith nodded, golden curls bouncing their agreement of this assessment.

Di, disregarding this, said, 'Normal for _you_ both. Mouse, Nan and I managed essay writing at sane hours, thanks very much.'

There was laughter all round. In the grate the last fire of the season went out in a popping of sap and spitting of embers. No one paid it any mind. It dimmed to blue and then to sear coals without a cry, or even so much as a stammer, and easing to nothing as had the tribulations of the last few months. Shortly, Di observed, it would be Nan and Jerry's anniversary, and they would, of course, have to do something for it. 'Cotton, isn't it,' she said, 'the first year?'

'Paper,' said Mara and Faith together. More laughter, as they were all simultaneously struck by the aptness of this with Nan's latest letter crackling between Di's fingers on yellowy cranesbill. It closed with what the girls who pinned hopes had been used to call Nan's 'almost poems.'

 _For all that, I wouldn't have my choices back to make over again. I watch my girls islanded in sleep of nights and think I understand what Mums meant about 'writing living epistles.'_

 _If that means ministering to Harrington – who is as much my child as Mandy or Miri – at weird hours, well, no one can argue that isn't part and parcel of motherhood. Besides which, I'd have them all with me going forward. The air is thick this season with promises of new beginnings and half-told stories. A heron glanced off the red canoe the other day and cried of spring. And if I understand Mums and her living epistles better now, I've long understood her love of bends in the road. We're heading towards a flurry of them, you, me and the rest of the girls who pin hopes, and it's good to be able to anticipate them again. I've missed that about them – as I do you, Di darling.. But summer will be on us before we've had time to breathe, and we'll have reason enough to be together then. I haven't forgotten you owe me a conversation or ten._

 _Until then, all my love,_

 _Nan_


	17. Sweetness Under the Sun

As promised, in the last weeks of May a little party set out from Glen St. Mary, pulled by the dual force of impending grandchildren and Jem's looming graduation. The group in question was headed by one Gilbert Blythe. Anne went with him, because, as she explained needlessly over the chaos of packing, 'I know what it's like to be a mother and miss your own. I can't undo it, of course, but I can understand. Someone should, I think.'

Gilbert, who had never thought much on this point, paused in his assessment of his medical case and could only nod, mute. Susan came too, armed with a hamper that would have fed the five thousand several times over, citing in justification the little galley kitchen with its lack of a jam cupboard.

'Teddy seems to fair all right with it,' said Anne, eyes shining at the sight of the basket. Susan sniffed, much to say that Teddy, who was not a Baker, _would_.

'You forget,' said Gilbert, confronted with the prospect of cramming the hamper into the little Ingleside car and thereafter into the luggage car of the train, 'that there must be at least two – sorry, three, I was somehow forgetting Judith Carlisle – excellent women on hand to take over the kitchen.'

'Yes, well,' said Susan, with another Baker sniff, 'I see no good reason to put them to the trouble when it can be so easily managed this way.'

'Careful, Susan,' said Gilbert, eyes twinkling – for he had successfully hefted the hamper into the car – 'that sounded dangerously like approval.'

They arrived, hamper and all, on what was to prove the last cool day of the season. They spent it recklessly in the Larkrise back garden, nursing glasses of lemonade and listening to the chorus of the leaves as they quivered, verdant and ripe on the surrounding trees – all but Susan, busily preoccupied with entrusting her burthens to the imperfect care of the galley kitchen. Periodically her head appeared at the window to lament the confines of the cold cupboard or query the location of the egg basket. Faith looked round at them and said with a poor attempt at earnestness, 'We won't need to cook for _months_.'

'All the more time for gremlins,' said Teddy, cheerfully.

* * *

Jem's graduation came and went with the cool weather, the day an unremarkable grey one with persistent breezes that nipped under gowns and pebbled skin. The assembled company grudged it its shade only until the following day, whence blossomed a heat wave such as not even the Ingleside grown-ups could recall. The sun rose early and spread eiderdown heavy across the country, so that it became a relief to retreat even to the coolness of curtained houses, tall glasses of lemonade in hand.

Far from having the kitchen to herself as Susan had envisaged, people regularly trafficked through it, the cold cupboard having become overnight the most sought-after place in the house. Everyone 'suddenly remembered' an item or two that would be quite useful to have, until final Susan capitulated and redirected her efforts nurseryward, only to be confronted by the horrific realisation that there was no such room in the house.

'I offered to move out,' said Kitty, in an effort to stem some of the handwringing. 'Only Faith said I mustn't and Jem said it wasn't allowed.'

'Absolutely not,' said Gilbert. 'You're one of ours now. Bindweed is probably less tenacious, didn't they warn you?'

'Besides,' said Jem, 'someone needs to be on hand to send Geordie into palpitations at no notice. Much more fun that way.'

'Judith will thank you for that I'm sure,' said Faith. Then, getting an arm around Kitty and hugging her as close as was possible under the circumstances, 'It would be much too quiet without you, darling.'

Faced with such sentiments there was nothing for it but for Susan to resurrect the old quilting frame in the attic of the Patterson Street Manse and commence a crib quilt. Because, as she insisted at regular intervals thereafter, 'The blessed babe must have _that_ at least!'

But it was no good. The crib top had barely been pieced to Susan's satisfaction when the baby deigned to make an appearance. It chose a day of astonishing heat when the sun was a blaze of glory and the air pregnant with pent up moisture. It rolled over Kingsport in somnolent waves that wizened the flowers and drove normal humans indoors. None of the Larkrise contingent qualified. It fairly bustled with activity as people rushed in and out of the door. Susan lost a bad quarter-hour attempting to locate the linen closet until Mara arrived and took over the task, driving Susan into the kitchen to boil water. Una came after that, white and startled-looking, but determined to sit with her sister. Poppy, who had come visiting on purpose for the twofold occasion of a wedding and this much-anticipated birth, sat down at the spindly-legged table and undertook the preparation of a groaning cake, because it seemed likely that at some point someone was going to want food, and neither Susan, with iron wool in her ears, nor Teddy, who was losing a game of chess to Shirley, seemed in fit frame of mind to make it. And Mara had anyway by then been requisitioned by Dr. Blythe, who had caused her to hand off linen to a terrified-looking Kitty with the declaration, 'I promised Jem he'd be spared a part in this, and we've weathered ordeals before, you and I.'

At some point thereafter Judith had looked in to ask what she could do, and Kitty had sent her armed with a telegram to the exchange to wire the news to Nan and Jerry, forgetting that Judith wouldn't be able to read her shorthand. Jem meanwhile was pacing the length of the thrush-and-strawberry dappled sitting room, while Peter hovered nearby Poppy, asking at intervals how best to be useful. Still at a loss after the nth reiteration of this question, she sent him in search of apples for a crumble. She was only reminded that they would be out of season so early in the summer when Shirley paused in the doomed chess game to remark on it.

'You had a more pertinent errand?' said Poppy, wrestling with her cake mixture.

'No,' said Shirley, with a smile for her. 'Sorry, Mouse. I didn't think.'

Poppy shook her head, _no matter_ , and the day waxed longer.

* * *

The sitting room was entirely too small to pace to any very good effect. Turning too soon Jem collided with the end table, sending an oil lamp onto the floor, the shock of the impact reverberating down his bad leg. In spite of the fact this was substantially less noisy than the sounds emanating from overhead, Kitty jumped.

'All right, Doc?' said Teddy, who was trying not to grin. On the premature termination of the chess game Shirley had delegated him to the kitchen to make tea, and now he set a tray of it on the table, steaming generously and smelling refreshingly of mint. Jem muttered something darkly about end tables that leapt out at people and Shirley said mildly, 'They wouldn't if you'd stop your impression of Joshua at the wall of Jericho. The poor sofa's going to be reduced to tumbling down in a moment just to humour you. No lavender?' this to Teddy.

'Faith won't have it in the house,' said Jem. 'There's camomile,' said Teddy, 'but I thought we should hoard that one until we actually need sleep.'

He began to pour out the tea, the green tartness of it making their mouths prickle. Cups went duly round, but Jem waved his away citing the heat, and Kitty declined to take her hands from her ears, so in the end only Shirley, Poppy, and Teddy who drank it.

It was, in fact, too hot for tea. Through the open windows came the scent of heat-withered lilies, lilacs and hyacinths, the smell cloying next to the tang of the mint. The air was so heavy that Jem could all but touch it. No, the last thing he needed was something hot. Still, the presence of a mug in hand seemed to settle the others. He picked one up arbitrarily, pleased by the weight and thickness, felt the heat of it and changed his mind. Experimentally he picked up a biscuit and crumbled half onto the windowsill to tempt the birds. No luck. They weren't venturing out in this heat either. Only his and Faith's child would be so stubborn as to arrive in a blaze of sun-drenched humidity. Supposing, of course, it ever arrived. How long had they been closeted upstairs? Surely too long – Poppy's fruitcake concoction was all but ready to emerge from the oven, and those took ages to bake. The biscuit crumbling wasn't nearly cathartic enough. Jem resumed pacing.

He was halfway between windowsill and the Jericho Sofa when Geordie appeared in the door saying brightly, 'Ah, Teddy, Jem, case for you,' as if this was any other day in creation.

'What,' said Jem, ' _now_?'

'Come on,' said Geordie, taking him by the arm, 'it'll take your mind off it.' Jem must have looked as dubious as he felt because Geordie said, 'Do you more good than worrying the day away. Trust me, I've done both.'

'Go on,' said Shirley, 'I'm seriously considering throttling you otherwise. No jury would convict. In fact, I fancy Faith will take my side when inevitably you wear a hole in the floor. Go be useful and stop wringing out mine and Kitty's nerves. I'll tell the others where you've got to, and we'll find you should there be anything to report. Where are you off to, by the way?'

'Admiral Hennessey's farm,' said Geordie.

Kitty said excitably, 'Not without me you're not!' and leapt to her feet with alacrity. Geordie began to protest and Teddy to join him but they were summarily overwhelmed by a vociferous Kitty, brandishing a pen and saying, 'The one who was dishonourably discharged from the war and had to start over on his half of the Hennessey farm?'

'Is it?' said Geordie, 'I've really no idea. The call only just came in.'

'Well,' said Kitty, 'I really think it must be him, seeing as Able Hennessey never went to sea a day in his life. Now _he_ is good at farming, but the Admiral isn't at all – his land has been under mortgage since the new manager took the bank over.'

Geordie looked from Teddy to Jem for confirmation of this barrage but it was Shirley who nodded assent. 'That's right,' he said, 'ever since the back pasture shrivelled beyond usability.'

'You see?' said Kitty. 'I'm a valuable source to you. I've _got_ to come.'

'Oh, go on,' said Jem generously. 'She needs out of the house as much as anyone, and apparently she knows more about the family than you, Teddy and I combined. Besides, letting the press in on it might help.' If Geordie looked dubious he forbore to comment. Instead he led the way down the narrow hall, past the clawfoot umbrella stand and into the blazing heat of high noon in mid-June. It was too hot even for the cicadas, and the air was prickly with their silence. They turned down the wooded lane to Admiral Hennessey's place, long stalks of grass twitching and crackling underfoot. Jem reached for a handkerchief to rub the inside of his collar and realised belatedly he had left it behind in his haste. The air was like drinking soup. Teddy was fanning his face with the brim of his sergeant's cap and even Kitty was reduced to a languid pace as she took Jem's arm and leaned heavily on it, her weight oppressively warm under the sun.

Only Geordie seemed unfazed, ramrod straight as ever, his talk swithering naturally between the impending baby and the case at hand as he went. 'It will be a while yet, I should think. And in this weather we'd rather your opinion sooner rather than later. Thought seeing the body on sight might be helpful to you.'

Jem made appropriate noises of agreement and Geordie was off again, saying apparently apropos of nothing, 'How attached are you to this house, anyway?'

'Hm?' said Jem, surprised.

'Only,' as if he hadn't spoken, 'I'm that close to installing a telephone – save Teddy and I running around like lunatics when something comes in that needs you.'

'Please,' said Jem, 'by all means. Do contrive things so that the world has an even easier time waking us up at all hours with private emergencies.' But then he grinned, and the others caught it off him. Kitty said, 'They do that anyway – they just batten down the door at the moment.'

'Besides,' said Geordie, 'it's not as if you're going to be getting much sleep for the foreseeable future.'

'You're really not convincing me,' said Kitty, head still pillowed on the crook of Jem's elbow, 'that gremlins are anything I want to sign on to, ever.'

Gentle laughter from the others. Geordie said, 'Oh, they're well worth it, wouldn't you say?'

Jem opened his mouth to say he had absolutely no idea, felt the static of Kitty's shifting curls on his shirt sleeve and changed his mind. 'Very well worth it,' he said.

* * *

The air in Admiral Hennessey's house was no improvement on outside. Jem had expected the odd stale, vacant air of a house unlived in. Instead it was musky with dust and damp with laundry and nascent mould. It peppered the walls in variegated stamp, here orange, there green, positively black along the skirtingboard. Jem's hands were halfway to his jacket pocket again before he recalled the absence of a handkerchief. Kitty sneezed and Teddy followed suit.

'Is there a Mrs Admiral Hennessey?' asked Jem.

'Oh yes,' said Geordie. 'Christian name Theresa. Judith doesn't think she's very well at the moment.'

'Well, no,' said Jem. 'I suppose she wouldn't be, under the circumstances. Hang on – Judith knows her?'

'They share the sewing circle at St Thomas's. She's not been well for ages, apparently. Judith's rather inclined to blame the war. Might be anything, though.'

'Yes, well,' said Jem, 'I don't suppose Judith will have any objection to talking the thing over?'

Geordie laughed. He said, 'On the contrary, I think the difficulty will be _extricating_ her from the case, don't you?'

Stepping cautiously, they negotiated a haphazard path from hall to living room, where little green tendrils bespoke the spreading of the mould, and dust motes floated lazily through the sun-drenched atmosphere. Whatever else Theresa Hennessey might be, Jem did not make her much of a housekeeper – and he was well-used to quotidian chaos. At least Larkrise had never run to _damp_.

There was a child in the living-room. Jem's eye found her at once, the woodsy green of her dress eye-catching for its neatness among the clutter of stained antimacassars, loose rugs and spent kindling. She was sitting under an occasion table, her knees drawn up to her chest, stockingless and scabby, eyes wide, brown and staring. Held between small, delicate fingers was the clumsy mouthpiece of the telephone. Seeing them, she dropped it and made to scurry backwards but collided with the skirtingboard, her head hitting the sharp corner of the occasion-table.

'It's quite all right,' said Jem. 'Teddy, would you mind…?'

'Sure thing, Doc.'

Teddy was still in the process of acquiescing when Kitty scrabbled deftly under the table and folded her person up likewise, so that her shoulder brushed that of the child.

'Don't mind them,' she said. 'They're quite nice, really.'

This elicited a squeak from the child, but neither did she back away when Teddy extended a hand to her.

'Edward Lovall,' he said solemnly to the child. 'Teddy among friends. Like him,' nodding at Jem. 'Him too,' inclining his head Geordie's way. 'You're quite safe here.' Another squeak, and the merest of twitches as the wide brown eyes swivelled Kitty-ward for verification of this information. Kitty nodded, and nudged the childish shoulder gently.

'We like him,' said Kitty comfortably. Another squeak and then the sound of bare knees and feet on warped linoleum as the child emerged from under the table. She tucked Teddy's hand in hers and said with Sunday School precision, 'Iris. I don't have another name. I didn't mean to be here. Mummy sent me to fetch her darning egg…Do you she'll be terribly cross? I've been an awful long time.'

'No,' said Teddy. Jem watched as Teddy hefted her up onto his shoulders and thence onto a shabby sofa, where he bundled her into a moth-eaten blanket – more moth than blanket – before joining her. 'You've done very well, Miss Iris.'

Jem and Geordie made suitable noises of affirmation on this point, and the child situated normally, Jem's eye caught the body for the first time. It was lying by the fire guard, twisted in spectacular contortions on the floor of the living room. No wonder the Iris's eyes were like saucers. 'Strychine,' said Jem, succinctly as he walked a circuit of the body. 'You don't want to check, Doc?' said Teddy from the sofa.

'Of course,' said Jem. 'But there's nothing new under the sun – not that could do _that_.' He gestured at Admiral Hennessey with his fingers splayed in impossible fashion, arms stiff and half-outstretched. What had he been reaching for? Nearby there was a bottle of wine, the alcoholic and grape smell of it mingling potently with damp and death – where had _that_ come from? Geordie, lifting it by the neck said, 'You'll want to look at that to, I suppose.'

'Very much,' said Jem. To Admiral Hennessey, he said, 'Who held you down, I wonder?'

'Doc?' said Teddy.

'The bruising,' said Jem. 'Around the mouth, you see? And the blood on the lip – he's bitten it, probably while the strychnine was in effect. Now, you'll have to forgive me…'

'Us or him?' asked Geordie, evidently amused.

'The Admiral. Not very dignified this,' said Jem, as he unbuttoned the man's shirt. It was easier than it might have been, the body still warm and lifelike between the heat and the damp of the house. More like undressing a sleeping child than a body.

'You see?' he said, when he had exposed the chest, and then for clarification, 'You, not him.'

Teddy and Geordie came and knelt next to him, while Kitty took up Teddy's place next to Iris. Said Teddy for all of them, 'What exactly are we seeing, Doc?'

Jem grinned the Blythe grin at them, then relented and tapped a finger against Admiral Hennessey's chest, where a bruise like a half-moon had formed. He said, 'Someone held him down – and kept his mouth shut. They must have been worried the poison wouldn't take if anything escaped during the tremors – can't have known how strychnine works, clearly.'

Then turning so that he effectively shielded the body, he said, 'Now, Iris, may I – ' And seeing her bob her nut-brown head, 'Iris, do you think you could tell me what time you came in here?'

He watched as two brown eyebrows knit together in concentration and she brought her fists up to her eyes to scrub at them.

'Dunno,' she said, her hands muffling her voice. 'Mummy sent me to fetch the darning egg and I went, 'cept the door was shut up and I knew Mrs Hennessey always left the windows open here so I just…It was ages ago. I didn't think he should be 'lone.'

'Quite right,' said Jem. 'That's why you telephoned for the station house?'

Iris bobbed her head, yes.

'Good,' said Jem. 'That was good you did that. Now, what about the clock. Do you remember where the hands were by any chance?'

At Jem's nod Teddy brought down a clock of softwood stamp from the mantel. He lifted the glass plate and held it out to Iris. Carefully she repositioned the hands. 'I _think_ that's right,' she said, retreating to Kitty's side. Geordie nodded gravely. He said, 'That's a tremendous help. Thank you.'

At this juncture a slim, harried woman appeared in the doorway. But for her blue eyes she stuck Jem as an older copy of Iris, from dented chin to delicate fingers. Unadorned, Jem noted, even the left ring finger. That would account for Iris's lack of a name then. Teddy went to her saying, 'You'll be Iris's mother, I suppose.'

'Grace Carmichael' she said, nodding. 'I sent her for a darning egg ages ago and I…' but here she appeared to register the twisted body of Admiral Hennessey for the first time and the sentence ended in a scream.

Jem guided her to the sofa, where he installed her on the other side of her daughter, and began absentmindedly to assess her for shock. Teddy meanwhile, had just confirming the time of Iris's errand to the big house when Shirley's head appeared around the doorframe. Rather breathlessly he said, 'You're wanted at home. A boy, hale and hearty as you like, and lungs like iron from the sound of it.' Up shot Jem as though electrocuted. He said, 'I _told_ you – '

'I,' said Geordie mildly, as he clapped Jem on the back, 'told _you_ you'd be better for not getting underfoot. Wasn't I right? We'll see this fellow's moved to the surgery for you.'

Jem said something vaguely indicating his assent. Dimly he registered Geordie's further questioning of Iris's mother but without taking in the substance. Shirley was in the doorway with news of his family and it was all he could do not to trip over the discarded kindling and ill-dusted end tables in his eagerness to escape the clutter of the room.

He spared a last look for little Iris, still encased in her moth-eaten blanket and looking positively dwarfed by the battered sofa before setting off towards Larkrise, the others at his heels.

* * *

Mother was waiting in the garden, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. 'Jem,' she called, jubilant, and came running down the lane, a streamer of red and grey, notwithstanding the heat. Her eyes were like clusters of stars, bright and luminescent. 'Oh he's the most perfect baby, darling – after you of course, and Walter and the little girls and –'

'Mums,' said Jem with affection as he submitted to her hug, 'you say that about every baby. Even the ruddy, tow-haired thing with the too-wide eyes that Susan's letters assure me is Mary Vance's latest.'

'Never mind Mary Vance,' said Kitty, tugging at Jem's arm. 'I want to see him. May we?'

They went, Mother hymning the virtues of her grandson all the way down the hall and up the stairs, Jem's protestation that 'so long as he's healthy, with ten fingers, toes and suitable number of limbs, I shall be satisfied.'

'Jem!' said his mother, horrified, 'really!'

But Geordie was laughing. He clapped Jem on the back again for good measure and said, 'I remember that feeling,' before taking up his place in the lionshead chair.

'Aren't you coming, Sir?' asked Teddy.

'After the family, possibly,' said Geordie, and helped himself to a cup of the mint tea, long since cooled, and a generous slice of the groaning cake.

They had cleaned and dressed the baby, never mind the room, in the time it had taken them to regain the house, though the smell of birth and blood was still faintly discernible among the starch of new linen and the milk-and-talcum scent of the baby. He was bundled into the crook of Faith's arm, eyes buttoned up in sleep in a manner that recalled Rilla of years ago. Faith herself was ensconced in the wrap of the country fair quilt and more pillows than Jem would have reasonably supposed the house was possessed of. Seeing Jem, she inclined her head to him in invitation. He needed none. Gingerly Jem slid an arm under his son's head and scooped the baby up into his arms. He felt unaccountably that they had always known one another. Seemingly it was mutual. Soft head in the cup of Jem's hand, the baby gave a snuffle as though in recognition, his breath warm and moist against Jem's chest.

Teddy, squinting at him said, 'He looks like the Doc, don't you think, Kitten?'

Kitty raised her eyebrows, whether at the opinion or the endearment Jem was hard pressed to decide. She said, 'He mostly looks small and sort of breakable.'

'I take it you don't want to hold him then,' said Jem with a grin. Kitty shook her head vigorously, adding belatedly, 'I'm sure he's very nice.'

Teddy beamed at her, the sun glinting off the whites of his teeth like pearls. To Jem he said, 'May I?' and hardly waiting for Jem's nod, lifted the bundle of limbs and swaddling into his arms. 'Hullo,' he said, tracing a finger along the curve of the baby's nose. 'It strikes me you haven't got a name.'

'He has,' said Faith sleepily, propping herself up on an elbow to say it. 'He's had one for ages.' Then she subsided among the quilt and the pillows, with a nod to Jem. He touched the fingers of his right hand to his son's forehead and said, 'We liked Christopher for him. We did think,' here looking apologetically to his parents, 'over the family ones but when it came to it, we thought he'd better have a name that was all his.'

'You know, Doc,' said Teddy, 'They generally get two names, children.'

'Edward' said Faith drowsily. It was Jem's turn to nod.

Teddy opened his mouth to say something, appeared to have run out of adequate words, and closed it again.

'I like it,' said Kitty. 'There aren't a lot of things people can do to it, which will be nice for him later.'

'You'd know all about that, Kitten,' said Teddy, finally. Kitty rolled her eyes but declined to answer. Mother lifted Christopher out of Teddy's arms and proceeded to hymn his good points all over again. Catching Jem's eye she said, 'Look, ten wee fingers….'beginning to count them, 'ten toes…' counting these also, 'and _no red hair_.'

Here Dad made a dismayed noise and said, 'Shame about that. It's served so many of our connection so well.'

'I do not know about that,' said Susan, appearing behind the doting grandmother, 'but I do know that those, Mrs. Dr. Dear, are ears to be proud of. For as I have often observed, eyes and noses change, but ears never do, and that, you may tie to.'

Easily she lifted little Christopher out of his grandmother's arms and began resettling him in the basket at Faith's elbow, all while he fought vainly to escape his swaddling. Una had long since slipped downstairs, Jem saw, and Mara with her, but now Susan followed, clucking and fussing, and Mother after her with a last covetous look at the baby in his basket. Dad was last of all, his hand on Mother's back. He said, 'He'll still be there in an hour, and in two, and in the days and weeks after today, Anne-girl.'

He would too, Jem thought, crouching by the basket and taking stock of the baby from the faint blue tracery of his veins along the crown of the skull to the Susan-approved ears. Satisfied, he allowed his attention to drift to the others; Faith nearly asleep, Teddy bristling like a cat with cream, Kitty atypically quiet. She hadn't even asked the providence of the names, and yet Jem couldn't shake the feeling that from her that was a kind of worship at least on the level of Susan and ear assessments.

'Mouse said they called you away to something?' said Faith now. Her voice was thick with sleep, her eyelashes heavy with it.

'Never mind that now,' said Jem. 'Tell you later, if you like. Both of you.' In spite of himself, he grinned at the Moses basket and its flailing contents.

Outside the sun shifted its course and came seeping through the drawn gingham curtains, sending sunlight and little cornflower shadows across their faces, Teddy, Faith, Kitty, and Christopher in his basket. In the stuffy, sealed-off bedroom it should have made breathing untenable. Jem barely registered it. How had he ever been so taken up with things as temperatures and humidity? They were well. They were all well. They were dappled with sunlight, radiantly glad, and the core of his world.

He sat there, knees growing cramped with balancing on them, and was ambushed suddenly by a stray piece of psalmody sacred to Marilla Cuthbert; _There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling._ He had never understood it in childhood, said over his bedside like a benediction. He understood it now. He touched a hand to Christopher's tender forehead and thought, _because I have set my love upon thee_...He must have said it aloud. Faith's eyes came open and she said groggily, 'That's not right.'

Jem blinked at her confusedly. 'Sorry?' he said.

'Psalms,' said Faith, with the hint of a smile, 'were clearly never your strong suit. You get your pronouns all back-to-front trying to remember them _. Because He hath set his love upon me._ Psalm 91:14'

'Ah,' said Jem, understanding dawning. 'I see. I like mine better.'

Gentle, perplexed laughter from the others. Faith's hand fought its way out of the nest of the Country Fair quilt and reached for his own sun-warm one. 'So do I,' she said.

* * *

 _Proof that not all births at my pen - screen? - need to be trials by fire. I hope. Tell me what you think. With thanks as ever to all of you reading, reviewing and bearing with my erratic updating._


	18. Ding Dong Bell

_With love and affection for Kslchen. This is still all your fault. There is also no good reason for the inclusion of this chapter, except that I seem to have harrowed all of you rather a lot lately. Enjoy the interlude._

* * *

'Edward Lovall, _what_ is that?' This uttered in tones of righteous indignation by Judith Carlisle as he stood on her doorstep, her children dancing giddily around his knees, a bundle of _something_ in his arms. _Something_ looked suspiciously like a dog.

'It's cold,' said Teddy, quite needlessly, as the bundle was shivering. He had wrapped it in his sergeant's coat, to which end it now appeared navy blue, long-nosed and trembling. It smelled damp.

'I see that,' said Judith, and folded her arms.

'It's a d– '

'Teddy, if that sentence ends in D-O-G, I will not be held accountable.'

'A god,' said Teddy, improvising quickly. 'Definitely a god.'

Almost imperceptibly Judith's eyebrows rose. Slightly more visible, the smile that threatened to blossom at the corner of her mouth. For as long as Teddy had known the Inspector's wife she had had a sense of humour, and it was getting the better of her now, which was as well for the dog. And for Teddy. Also for the children, still leaping like salmon around him.

'A god,' said Judith Carlisle mildly.

'Well, er, yes. Possibly an idol.'

'No doubt of the sort Rachel took from Laban.'

Without being able to explain the _how_ or _why_ of it, Teddy had the distinct impression he was being gently laughed at by Judith Carlisle, with her brown slanting eyes and half-smile. He was not altogether sure. For the first time in the conversation he wished for the presence of the Inspector. Teddy wasn't sure what he'd have made of the dog, but he _knew_ he was the only person who could rival Judith Carlisle at theology. Teddy had never much understood it, except in the old, by-rote Sunday School sort of way. He certainly couldn't build jokes around and out of it. Sensing this she said, 'Small and easily portable.' This, Teddy sensed was supposed to be elucidating. It was not.

'We found it down the well at the Able Hennessey's place,' said Teddy, on surer ground here. This time Judith's eyebrows unquestionably rose.

'That would be the home of the man you suspect of his brother's murder?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'Teddy Lovall, am I to understand you are standing on this doorstep telling me you took _my_ _children_ to the home of a potential murder suspect?'

'No,' said Teddy. 'Well, er, yes. But only because – '

'It's not coming in the house,' said Judith, before Teddy could finish. Not, he thought, that he was likely to have come up with a satisfactory explanation for that one anyway. Even if they _had_ only gone onto Able Hennessey's farm because the little gremlins had heard the barking. Well, it had been hard _not_ to, the racket the little blighter had been making. Shrill as any tin whistle Teddy had ever heard and quite noisy enough for one too. And had it _wriggled_! Like an honest-to-goodness eel, the little thing had been as Teddy fished it off of a convenient ledge, whence it had become stranded. It had been trying to wash his face and clamber over his shoulder at the same time, and it being sopping wet with well water hadn't helped him at all. And that was before he'd all but had to fish Tibby out _with_ the dog – not that he envisaged Judith ever needing to know this pertinent detail. He'd deliberately stripped her of her damp socks to that end, and was rather hoping Judith had no cause to scrutinize her youngest's bare ankles. So far, so lucky. Now she was closing the door behind her, effectively pushing himself and the gremlins off the stoop, the better to barricade her home.

'It's _evidence_ Teddy, it's not coming _here_.'

Teddy rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, awkward because of the dog in his arms. It had an elongated spine, and would keep trying to stand on its hind legs like a human.

'It's not even an _English_ dog,' said Judith, as if this should somehow have made a difference. Teddy gave her a Look; they both knew it wouldn't have done.

'I'm not particularly sure _what_ it is,' said Teddy. 'It's the Doc that knows dogs, not me, remember?'

Judith opened her mouth to argue the point, changed her mind and shook her head. 'I'd forgotten you wouldn't have gone hunting,' she said.

'When have _you?_ ' asked Teddy, incredulous. So were the children, even if they were still mostly giddy with enthusiasm for the shivering dog and only following one word in ten.

'Not me, family. Grandparents, in fact, back in England. And that,' giving the bundle under the sergeant's coat a prod, 'is a Dachshund. Good for getting under gorse, apparently. And infamously stubborn.'

'Right,' said Teddy, hoping the comparison suggesting itself strongly was not stamped on his face as plainly as it was on his brain.

'We found it down the well,' said the eldest of the gremlins at this point, ever helpful. Teddy, who had been hoping to gloss this point, suppressed a groan.

'Oh?' said Judith, dropping onto her knees the better to be level with her son, 'did you really?'

'Oh yes, _Eema._ We heard it barking from miles and miles away. We thought it must be hurt, barking like that and T–' Here Teddy strategically intervened by nudging the boy's ankle with the toe of his boot. Tibby and her encounter with the well becoming common knowledge was the last thing anyone needed.

'Go on,' said Judith in tones suggestive of her knowing perfectly well Teddy was manipulating the conversation.

'And Teddy went and fetched it out,' said the little boy, with great gusto. Possibly, because this part was also true. There followed a confused recitation by several gremlins at once, the events of the morning spent on the Hennessey farm and the extraction of the Dachshund from the well. Judith listened, deciphered something resembling a narrative, and reiterated her verdict; 'It's not coming in the house.'

Teddy looked from her to the dog and back before deciding that of the two of them, he could least risk invoking her ire. The Dachshund was not taking up residence at the Carlisle household then, be its eyes ever so brown and like liquid moons. Toby, self-appointed spokesperson of the Tribe of Gremlin, had other ideas. He said now, 'Oh, that's all right. We'll build it a dog-house you know. Daddy can help.'

So there were a whole tribe of Dachshund-minded people, thought Teddy. Well, they didn't get it from the _Inspector_ , he'd swear to that. Judith said, 'It's not staying in the garden either.'

Squeals of disappointment from every quarter, including the Dachshund. The shivering had stopped and it was beginning to look decidedly sodden. How Judith Carlisle could look at it unmoved – those great brown eyes! – was beyond Teddy.

Toby said gamely, 'If we had a dog, _Eema_ , then Daddy wouldn't have to worry 'bout us when he had late nights at the station.'

This wasn't, all told, a bad argument, to Teddy's mind. For a dizzy moment he thought they had moved forward but Judith laughed, not unkindly, and said, slipping an arm around Toby's bony shoulders, 'that's why we've got _you_ , darling.'

So much for that then. The Dachshund – all ten, damp pounds of it – was starting to feel heavy. Awkwardly Teddy shifted it in his arms, and it relaxed, boneless and still curiously upright, against his shoulder.

'Try Larkrise,' said Judith with affection. 'They stood taking you in, after all.'

This time Teddy was _sure_ he was being teased. He grinned at her, an odd combination of humour and mischief and said, 'Did the Inspector never tell you? He almost brought me home here.'

Judith laughed. She waved her arms in the direction of the lane and said, 'Six gremlins and Geordie are quite enough to be getting on with, thanks very much. Go on, the lot of you, see if you can't foist your god on other people.'

'Idol,' said Teddy solemnly over his shoulder as he went. 'I've decided he's definitely an idol.'

* * *

He found Larkrise in its usual ordered chaos. The Doc had apparently capitulated on the issue of Faith's lying in and carried her downstairs, where she was now snuggly ensconced on the sofa, a blanket at her knees and little Christopher asleep on her chest. Someone had laid out tea things but failed to match the saucers to the teacups. That would be Kitty presumably, since without exception the Doc and Faith favoured the mugs from the pantry, which seemed to work better for everyone. More tea, nothing mismatched, and all round less fussy to deal with, no worrying about where to tuck little fingers. The Inspector was in his usual lionshead chair by the fire, legs stretched out luxuriantly, obviously enjoying his version of a peaceable idyll while the Doc gave his verdict on the body of Admiral Hennessey. He seemed not a whit concerned that his small son was being schooled in the effects of strychnine on the human body even before he had conscious memory of it.

'There was a generous helping of it in that bottle we found,' the Doc was saying, 'probably administered to him by a known quantity. Not a woman.'

'Oh?' said the Inspector, 'How could you tell?'

'Someone,' the Doc was explaining, 'held his mouth closed.'

'Definitely not a woman, then,' said Faith.

'I'd have thought,' from the lionshead chair, 'you of all people would be for women doing whatever they chose. Even murder.'

'Oh, I am,' said Faith. 'This isn't an objection to suffrage, it's laws of basic physics. Have _you_ ever tried holding down a strychnine victim? _I_ couldn't do it, even after years of lugging people about in the name of nursing.'

'They do,' said Kitty, from the hearthrug, 'sometimes dose people with it, don't they?'

'You mean could he have taken it himself?' said the Doc. 'I shouldn't think it likely. The bruising around the mouth, remember.'

At this point the conversation broke off abruptly, whether because the gremlins tore into the room like a cyclone or because of the unexpected sight of Teddy with an armful of Dachshund, that young man couldn't have said. Certainly the gremlins _did_ burst from the hallway with wild abandon and fling themselves at their father's outstretched feet. Five in six did anyway; Tibby apparently decided that Shirley, ensconced in the wingback chair was overly isolated and clambered up his knees instead. One of the middle gremlins, failing to gain purchase on his father's limbs, redirected his attention towards Kitty, who fended him off with an expert elbow in the name of what Teddy suspected were probably illegal notes. In so doing, she looked up, wild-eyed, spotted the dog and said in tones that only rivalled those of Judith Carlisle for incredulity, 'Teddy, is that a _dog_?! Where did it come from? What's its name?' and proceeded to hurtle a barrage of questions at him.

Briefly Teddy considered flinging his coat at her head, before recalling it was full of shivering Dachshund. Equally momentarily he considered contesting the point. 'No, it's a cat,' was halfway to his mouth, when he saw the look of amusement stamped across her face and changed tack. Turning to the Inspector, and gesturing at the scene before him with the hand not cradling the dog, he said, 'Won't your wife rather want to be in on the discussion, sir, seeing as she knew Mrs Admiral?'

The Inspector laughed, said, 'I should think so - I left her wrangling household accounts. Much duller.' And then, in virtually the same breath, 'Teddy, forgive me, is that a _dog_?'

The gremlins said in chorus, 'It's a _god_!' to general bafflement. Teddy choked on supressed laughter. To the Inspector he said, 'I was given strict instructions not to call it that. I presume to save the gremlins not getting attached to it.'

The Inspector shook his head. 'That one still takes explaining, Teddy,' he said. 'Why is it _here_? How do you have it?'

'Judith wouldn't have it in the house,' said Teddy. He was beginning to feel Kitty's job as reporter for the police beat was in serious jeopardy.

'I should think not,' the Inspector wryly said. 'She's never liked dogs. Neighbour's one went mad and chased her and Tabby – that's one of the sisters, you know – and cornered them in the garden shed, oh, years ago now.'

'Oh,' said Teddy, rather flatly. 'That would account for it.' He felt he ought to have known this.

Kitty, meanwhile, had eschewed her shorthand and got the Dachshund out of his arms, sergeant's coat and all. She was now cradling it by the fire, even as it reprised the Wriggling Eel Act of earlier and attempted to wrap itself around her neck, a fine, writhing stole, complete with claws, ears, and long, velveteen nose.

'His nose is all cold, poor thing,' she said. Shirley, from the wingback chair, arms full of an equally unruly Tibby, said, 'His nose has every right to be cold. Dogs noses _should_ be.'

'Should they?' said the Doc, who was crouched over the dog and tickling it's belly while it waved four tawny feet in the direction of Kitty's nose, perhaps four inches away.

'He's _sweet_ ,' said Kitty now, 'aren't you, you _ickle wee sing_?'

Teddy fairly goggled at her. He couldn't remember the last time Kitty had been soppy about – well, anything, actually. She was wary even of Christopher, and as gremlins went, Teddy thought him fairly placid. A great wailer, of course, but not – so far – without cause.

'Yes,' the Doc said, 'yes, you're a very handsome fellow, aren't you?'

'A very noble nose,' said Kitty. The Doc said, 'Magnificent. Romanesque even.'

Teddy looked back and forth between them, then to Faith, and then to Shirley for confirmation that not everyone had lost their sanity. The dog was half _drowned_. It had a coarse blue fur more like skin than what Teddy considered normal dog fur, any number of little aberrations along the same, and great long nose and wide eyes that consumed a disconcerting proportion of its face. Hardly anything to write home about. And yet there the Doc and Kitty sat, rhapsodizing about those same eyes, having exhausted all plausible tributes to its nose.

He watched as the Doc plucked the Dachshund out of Kitty's lap and said in the voice he reserved for gremlins, 'Come, here Tuesday. Yes, that's nice, isn't it?' This as the dog snuggled under the crook of his elbow.

More of this nonsensical patter would have been forthcoming, but here Faith intervened to observe from the sofa, 'Thursday, Jem. It's Thursday.'

'No,' said the Doc, stubbornly, pointing at the Dachshund, ' _This_ is _Tuesday_.'

Teddy watched as Faith rubbed a hand across her forehead, as if seeking to communicate the blindingly obvious to a recalcitrant child. 'But it's Thursday. Teddy and the gremlins found him on a Thursday. So surely he ought to be Thursday.'

'What would Monday think?' said the Doc, aghast. 'He'd suppose Tuesday and Wednesday had necessarily been eaten if we called him that. Or died. He'd be horrified. No, this is _definitely_ Tuesday.'

'Right,' said Faith, in tones that declared the battle well lost. 'If you say so.'

* * *

Geordie had neglected the display over the dog in favour of corralling his children, who were in a fair way to run riot around the Larkrise lounge. Not that this was untoward, but Teddy could usually be relied upon to keep at least half an eye on them and Teddy was presently taken up with the spectacle of the dog. It was, admittedly, quite something else. Now he dissuaded the gremlins climbing on him in Dachshund fashion and extracted the story of the Dachshund Down the Well from them in elaborate detail, up to and including Tibby's introduction into the water bucket. At this narrative junction, Geordie made the executive decision to be kept in the dark on certain particulars and recalled his sergeant.

'Am I to understand,' he said mildly to Teddy now, 'that you and the gremlins have been gadding about Able Hennessey's place?'

'Only because of the dog, sir,' said Teddy. He had the grace to look momentarily abashed, before adding brightly, 'It's quite all right sir – Judith knows.'

'Sorry,' said Geordie, 'Judith knows you had her children at the home of a known suspect?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And yet,' said Geordie, despairing, 'you can sit there, and tell me it's quite all right.'

'Well it is, sir.'

'For you,' said Geordie, ominously. 'I'll have it on my head, you watch.'

'If it's any consolation, sir, we never went near the house. And Tibby only – '

Geordie held up a hand. 'I don't want to know,' he said. 'Let there be something I can look Judith in the eye over and plead honest ignorance to, please.'

Teddy abated. He crossed the room to the fire and commenced to pay homage to Tuesday, nicely warm now, and thumping his tail in satisfaction. Drier, he was beginning to look more substantial, even stocky. Exactly how he had fit into the cavity of the well was a point of continued confusion. Regretfully he said, 'Judith seemed to think he might be evidence, Sir.'

The Inspector looked doubtful. He said, 'Because you found him over on Able Hennessey's land, you mean? What say, Jem, could a dog have given Admiral Hennessey that strychnine?'

There was laughter all around the room, even from Faith. This dislodged Christopher from the snug of her elbow and he opened his mouth to mewl in kittenish fashion, stopping only when he was quickly and efficiently resettled.

'I think,' said Teddy, as he leaned around Kitty the better to rub Tuesday's belly, 'she meant because he was down that well in the first place. It _is_ a funny thing to do to a dog.'

The Inspector hummed, thoughtful. He said, 'Neither Theresa Hennessey nor the Carmichaels mentioned a dog. Surely the little girl would have, even if the others didn't?' He nodded in pointed fashion at the gremlins, who had forsaken his person to dance attendance on a rapturous Tuesday.

'The Admiral Hennesseys have never kept a dog,' said Shirley from the wingback chair.

A groan from the Inspector suggested it was the wrong thing to say. He said, 'This case grows more exasperating by the minute. Right, so, as it currently stands, neither Theresa Hennessey nor Grace Carmichael administered the poison because neither could have held the man down. Moreover, Theresa Hennessey is supposed to have been out doing relief milking and getting trampled by the animals for her trouble – hence the bruising down half her body. Jem had the temerity to confirm that this morning. And I think it a safe bet we can eliminate little Iris. That leaves us with Able Hennessey and his wife, neither of whom have a motive.'

'I thought,' said Kitty, pausing in the midst of her Dachshund worship, 'They had arranged to pay off Admiral Hennessey's mortgage?'

'That sounds like motive,' said Faith.

'Oh, they did, and it does,' said Geordie, savagely. 'But only until you read over the will and realise that the lot goes to Theresa Hennessey – not that there's much in the first place. Able Hennessey only sees a penny of that money back with his brother alive.'

'Did he know that?' asked Faith. 'It wouldn't be the first time a will had held a surprise or two. Remember the Darks and the Penhallows?'

Jem and Shirley groaned. Shirley said reminiscently, 'Oh God, that awful Dark jug. Even the Glen couldn't talk of anything else for weeks after Rebecca Dark died. Mother Susan was wild to know who it had gone to.'

'I have no idea,' said Geordie, 'what you're on about. But Able Hennessey _definitely_ knew what was in the will. He witnessed it. And all of that is _before_ the vexed question of the dog down the well that no one can account for, because the Admiral Hennesseys don't keep dogs and – Shirley, tell me, does Able Hennessey possess such thing as a dog?'

'The world's most ungovernable collie,' said Shirley.

'No Dachshunds who answer to days of the week for names?'

Shirley smiled. 'Nothing like that,' he said.

The Inspector groaned. He said, 'Well it was worth a try. Right, I vote we discount the dog. How do you feel,' turning here to Faith, 'about keeping him in perpetuity?'

'I didn't realise I had a choice,' she said.

* * *

 _My murder mystery devotees will notice I'm not referencing a specific title here, so much as the style of one. Look ye to your nursery crimes for this one._


	19. The Way through the Woods

_Hello again! Easter happened, and somehow in spite of not being in a choir it still swallowed my life the last few weeks. As ever, thanks to all of you who have been loyally reading and/or reviewing. I know it's not just my life that's busy._

 _You'll be glad (? Relieved?) to hear that this is the very last chapter that feels a compulsion to pay homage to George Gently and his weird epilogic endings. If you have no taste for hangings, gloss the end of this from 'Later, Jem would sit...' until the next line break. I will absolutely forgive you not sharing my taste for the grim and sombre._

 _I would also be remiss if I didn't somewhere acknowledge that, as ever, I have repurposed about three different plots to create this murder. They are none of them remotely original. but I'll do that for you someday in the near future if you like._

* * *

Four, or perhaps five in the morning, found Jem pacing the Larkrise sitting room, babe in arms. Sun was streaking traitorously through the fine cotton of the curtains, illuminating the strawberry thief paper and tracing the last vestiges of sleep from the corners of Jem's eyes.

'It's still not right,' he said to Christopher, as he rounded the corner home to the spindly-legged table. The baby had woken up with the regularity of clockwork some hour and a half back, and Faith had fed him half-asleep, both of them well-practiced in the habit by mid-June. It was _afterwards_ that Christopher had begun to cry in good earnest, for no discernible reason that Jem could find. He was warm, fed, and comfortable in his basket. Faith had reached for him, but Jem had intercepted her, determined that she get something approximating a full hour's sleep.

So there was Jem, pacing the Larkrise sitting room, weaving backwards and forwards between the thrushes and their strawberries, naming them to his son as he went. They were all from alphabet poems tonight, he decided. _A was an archer, shot at a frog, B was a blind man, led by a dog…_ That had worked until Jem had collided against letter _I_ and realised he hadn't his mother's gift for reeling off verse. Nothing springing to mind starting with the appropriate letter, he gave improvisation up as a bad job and began parsing the murder investigation at hand, which was how he came to be pacing and musing aloud on the state of the Hennessey murder to his infant son.

'It's still not right,' he said again, quite as if Christopher had voiced some objection. Perhaps he had; he had to be wailing about _something_.

'You see,' said Jem to his son, 'it _couldn't_ have been the little girl. Oh God, do you know, she looked the image of your mama the first time I met her, only all greeny and woodsy instead of golden, and younger. A good deal younger. Six, I should say, and that at the outside. So not really like her at all except for the all-limbsness of her and that awful look of holding her world together with her fingertips. As if you pushed the littlest bit too hard and she would break into little pieces – but fierce with it and eyes like saucers.' Here he tripped over Tuesday, whose put-upon squeak startled Christopher and set off a fresh wave of malcontent. Jem opened his mouth to curse, recalled the infant in his arms and shut it again.

'They were brown,' said Jem, in an effort to soothe Christopher back to sleep. 'Little Iris's eyes. Brook brown, quite unlike her mother's. Well, they wouldn't be, seeing as she was supposed to Able Hennessey's natural daughter and he – ' Here Jem broke off musing and pacing both, startled by the force of the revelation. Christopher began to wail again, unhappy at the loss of the comforting rhythm of this night-time perambulation. From the hearthrug, Tuesday began to howl in sympathy and then Teddy was on the stairs offering to girning water, Kitty at his heels, armed with a lamb bone Jem was tolerably sure Teddy had intended for the stockpot. Without thinking, Jem foisted the baby on her and said, 'Settle him, can you? I'll give you the advance on this story if you do,' and notwithstanding Teddy's protestations, took him by the arm and dragged him, girning water and all, towards the door.

'Doc,' gasped Teddy, 'it's barely morning. Where are we going?'

'The other wrong thing,' said Jem, 'I've worked it out.'

* * *

Twenty minutes later they sat blinking and breathless in Geordie's kitchen, enshrined in candlelight, the sound of infantine wailing replaced by the rising shriek of a kettle. As Judith plucked it from the range and fussed over the tea, Geordie appeared stumbling downstairs, straightening his tie as he went. Obviously ungodly summons fazed him not at all. Jem was glad. He felt someone nudge his elbow and dimly registered the chink of china as Judith slid a piece of the Blue Italian in front of him. Darjeeling from the smell, all warm, golden and floral. Milk followed in its jug, so different to the smell from the scent that seemed perpetually on Faith and the baby of late. Opposite him, Teddy made noises of groggy gratefulness and leaned across the table to appropriate the creamer. Geordie, accepting a cup in his turn, said only, 'Thank you, my sweet,' and joined the others at the table. To Jem he said, 'Judith said something about you having had a brainwave?'

'I wouldn't call it quite that,' said Jem, provoking an exasperated noise from Teddy's corner.

'Only, little Iris – her eyes were brown.'

Sorry?' said Teddy, baffled. Geordie too was shaking his head. 'I'm having terrible recollections of Henderson and his larynx,' he said. 'Why in God's name do the colour of little Iris's eyes matter?'

'Because,' said Jem, 'Able Hennessey's wife told you she was Able's daughter.'

Confused looks passed between Teddy and Geordie. Teddy said, 'Right, now I'm remembering that bloody larynx of Henderson's. Sorry,' this as an afterthought with a look to Judith. She was trying and failing to supress a smile, Jem saw. Teddy said, indifferent, 'So he had blue eyes and Iris hasn't – how has that got anything to do with anything?'

'Her mother's blue-eyed too,' said Jem.

'Doc,' said Teddy 'please tell me we didn't rush over here for you to state the strikingly obvious.'

'No,' said Jem. At the head of the table Judith picked up the teapot and said conversationally, 'It's a bit like tortoiseshell cats, isn't it?'

' _Is_ it?' said Teddy, looking as if he had by then well and truly lost the plot.

'Yes,' as Judith poured out more tea, 'and the way they're always queens.'

' _Are_ they?' This from Geordie.

'A bit like that,' said Jem, gratefully. 'Look,' he said, essaying a sip of his tea, 'take that painting over there – the one of the sea.'

'The one your brother-in-law sent as a thank you?'

'Never mind that,' said Jem. 'How many blues do you suppose are in it?'

Geordie squinted across the room, more owing to an influx of sun than otherwise. To say it was six in the morning the day was well and truly underway in the east-facing Carlisle kitchen. It was, of course, impossible to see much of anything. Geordie looked, hopefully to Judith and said, ' My sweet? Any idea?' She shook her head.

'Right,' said Jem, 'well, it doesn't really matter. The point is, there could be six, or ten, or two, but if I added even one brown to it, that seascape would be a wash of brown. And however much blue I added back in, it would _still_ be brown. Do you see?'

'No,' said Geordie and Teddy together.

Judith said, 'It _is_ like the cats – you can't get brown eyes from two sets of blue. Is that it?'

'Oh thank _God,'_ said Jem, feelingly. 'I was starting to think I'd have to draw up charts.'

Geordie laughed. He said, 'It wouldn't make a jot of difference, Jem. It would be the Insulin discovery all over again. Faith will be sorry to have missed it.'

'Yes, well,' said Jem, 'I left her asleep. And I may or may not have promised Kitty the case to write up – '

Geordie's groan never quite reached breaking point. Judith said overtop it, 'Admiral Hennessey had brown eyes.'

'Sorry?' said Jem. Teddy was choking on his tea. Whether this owed to Judith's alacrity or the recollection of the gifting of the case to Kitty was anyone's guess.

'Admiral Hennesey,' said Judith with her famous, Waterford Crystal precision, 'Had. Brown. Eyes.'

The effect of this was electric. Geordie sat to attention and Teddy choked so severely on his tea that he turned a dangerous red. Geordie went to hit him hard between the shoulders. Recovering he said, ' I see. And Iris's eyes were brown.'

'Yes,' Geordie said. 'Very definitely brown. Suddenly Theresa Henderson has a motive again.'

Judith rose. She collected a basket and said, 'Right, well, Faith and I owe her a visit anyway. I promised we'd make up scones this morning. Thought it would do everyone a bit of good. I'll see what I can't find out, shall I?'

Jem watched a sun-dazzled Geordie as a myriad series of responses coruscated across his face. 'An excellent idea,' all he said in the end. Judith went, basket in hand, her parting injunction something about what to give the gremlins by way of breakfast when they deigned to appear. Teddy, meanwhile was shaking his head. He said, 'Not to rush in with cold water, or anything, 'but wasn't Theresa Hennessey with Able Hennessey's cows? She has the bruises to prove it.'

'I don't know,' said Geordie. 'Did we ever check that? I mean, Grace Carmichael said her mistress had gone to do the relief milking, but she also said it wasn't the normal day – that Theresa had swapped that week.'

'But the Doc saw the bruises,' said Teddy. 'And he said – '

'I know,' said Geordie. 'I know. Jem, tell me, is there any way, any way at all, those bruises came from something else?'

They grew thoughtful, the silence punctuated only by the chink of Blue Italian against Spode saucers. When it seemed the tension of consideration could stretch no further, Teddy reached for the teapot on its wicker coaster and replenished their cups. In his need for something to do, he overlooked the strainer, and the leaves tumbled free of the spout, so that Jem's next mouthful of tea was full of the sharp, nib-like stalks of leaves as they rose to the surface of his cup.

'I wonder…' he said meditatively, gnawing at a tea leaf. Without a word he rose and crossed the room and knelt in front of the doll house beloved of the gremlins. It was a vast Victorian affair all done up in architectural curlicues and imitation brick lacework that would have delighted Alastair McNeilly. Jem's attention was not for the architecture. Gently he split the house open, revealing so many oversized room and a plethora of slumbering dolls.

'Doc?' said Teddy, his eyebrows somewhere in the vicinity of his hairline. Geordie looked incredulous.

'Now,' said Jem, 'we found Admiral Hennessey here.' He took an adult doll and set it in what he took for the living room, next to the fireplace. 'More twisted, obviously, but this will do. Now, Iris Carmichael was…about here, Teddy?' With difficulty Jem stuck an infant doll under a miniature occasion table.

'I'd say so, Doc,' said Teddy. 'And Grace, her mother,' said Geordie, crossing the room and appropriating the mother doll, 'came in about here.' He set the doll down at the living room entrance.

'Now, the bottle of wine would have been…'

'About here, Doc,' said Teddy, taking a doll's teacup from Jem and placing it arm's length from the prone doll.

'Good,' said Jem. 'Meanwhile, this,' brandishing another doll, 'is Mrs. Admiral Hennessey, and she was over there, somewhere.' He gestured to the wall behind the dollhouse, awash in golden sunlight. 'But,' still waving the doll like a pointer, 'if we suppose that Grace Carmichael was only repeating what she'd been told, that changes it slightly. Suppose for a minute she was here.' He set the doll representative of Theresa Hennessey down in a living room armchair. 'She'd have poured the wine out, so…A glass each, though I can't imagine she drank it herself.'

'But,' said Geordie, 'I thought you said she couldn't have held her down?'

'No,' said Jem. 'No, I don't think she did. She's not nearly strong enough. But suppose for a minute she _tried_. Look,' seeing the others staring at him in bafflement, 'she pours out the wine. Admiral Hennessey drinks it. He begins to convulse almost immediately, because strychnine is vicious. We _know_ the murderer didn't know what they were meddling with. Hennessey begins to convulse and she becomes convinced he'll spit the poison up and maybe survive. What does she do?'

'She'd hold him down,' said Geordie, snapping his fingers together.

'She'd try to,' said Jem. 'He's much heavier, remember, and he's flailing like a fish hooked by a snare. Given the angle of the body, I think she'd have bent over him so,' positioning the Theresa Hennessey doll appropriately, 'and he'd have fought back, and flung her off _here_ ,' moving the doll in westerly direction towards the back of the dollhouse. 'She'd have fallen, all laws of speed and distance and what have you holding as they should, on her right, colliding with the whatnot. Do you remember it?'

'The great massive mahogany thing?' said Teddy. 'It was the only half-decent thing in the place. Not very forgettable that.'

'Bruising, of course,' said Geordie, 'her right side. Would that work?'

'I think so,' said Jem. And then, as recollection collided with speculation, 'Faith!' And to Geordie's bemused expression, 'She's up at the house – scones or something.'

'Judith's idea,' said Geordie. 'Almost certainly quizzing her on God-knows-what. Bloody hell.'

'Kitty,' said Teddy. 'I'll telephone her, shall I? She'll have gone for the paper, but,' with a pointed look Jem's direction, 'if the Doc's promised her the story, I guess she'll abandon it for gremlins in the name of a lead.'

'Anything she likes,' said Geordie.

* * *

It seemed an eternity before Kitty answered the summons. She appeared on the doorstep flushed with running, one hand pressed to a stitch in her side, and humming with undeniably supressed excitement. Stupidly, Jem heard himself say, 'I thought I left you with _our_ resident gremlin?'

'Up at the Hennessey place,' said Kitty, never missing a beat. 'The Admiral's one. Went with his mother and Judith a while ago.'

Jem did not hear her. He lingered only long enough to press a glass of water on Kitty, never noticing the cup he handed her was repurposed Blue Italian, still full of residual tea leaves. Vaguely he was aware of Geordie's darkly muttered, ' _Christ_.'

'I'll look after them,' said Kitty, her words failing to register. How _could_ she, when the people in need of looking after were holed up with a potential murderer baking bloody scones?

It was only as Jem bolted out the front door that he realised she must have meant the gremlins. Simultaneously he became aware that it was still untenably hot. Already it felt like high noon and the clock wasn't even into double figures yet. _What_ Jem wondered as he ran, had been so urgent about those damn scones that they had had to be made before breakfast? Was Theresa Hennessey expecting company for elevenses or what? Dimly, under the panicked fog of this musing, he caught himself wondering if he'd given Kitty enough water. No matter. She could help herself to more if need be. Kitty was capable. Better at shorthand than roasts, maybe, but even she could see to a glass of water.

Behind him Teddy shouted what might have been 'Doc! Not so fast!' but might have been anything. Jem's focus had contracted until all that was left was the Admiral Hennessey's failing farm, the route that would get him there and the people he would discover on arrival. _Please God let them be safe_. An absurd prayer, he realised, of course they would be safe. This was June, 1922, not 1914. There was no war, and no Huns and they were at bloody peace. But what was it Shirley had said after little Edward Conover's baptism? _It's a needful thing, your work_. Apparently so. Needful, because presently Faith, and Christopher in his swathing band, never mind Judith, were up at the Admiral Hennessey place and – but no use worrying about it until he got there. He'd just slip in and assess the situation and maybe…well, he'd figure it out when he got there. It was only what he, Teddy and Geordie always did. Somehow he would get them out, and safely to Kitty and then… _There shall no evil befall thee, nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling_ _._ It came back to him suddenly, like a compass needle flying homeward. Aunt Marilla had had the right idea after all. Not ghoulish, as his boyhood self had thought, necessary. Needful. He'd see them safe and then…well, he'd deal with that too, when it came to the point. _Needs must._ If he was right. But his bones were full of the leaden weight of certainty and it left little room for doubt. It also made running difficult. Or perhaps it was only the heat, or a root underfoot that made him trip next.

'Steady,' said Geordie, catching him up. 'No good to anyone if you get yourself killed en route there.'

'But,' said Jem, 'I must – '

'I know,' said Geordie. 'I know. We'll get there.'

* * *

When they did, they found the house awash in the haze of morning heat, almost like a mist. Jem's head ached, from sun or nerves he had no idea. He opened his mouth thinking to call for Faith, for all of them, but felt Geordie's hand clamp over it before he could say anything. 'No sense in making a thing of it,' he said.

Reluctantly, Jem saw the sense in this. There was Iris swinging from a rope on the branch of a slippery elm, oblivious to all but her daydreams. Of all the senseless things, startling her seemed foremost of them just then. Clumsily, Jem raised her a salute by way of greeting and allowed Teddy to lead the way into the house.

It was still damp, and though Jem couldn't swear to it, he thought the mould had spread. The way things were going, Jem gave it days, possibly hours before it discovered the secret of fire, maybe even made up whole mould civilisations. Decidedly different to the last visit was the smell of baking. It mingled with the damp and the mould and seeped through the house like moisture.

'Kitchen's this way,' said Geordie with such authority that Jem raised his eyebrows. 'I thought it was Judith who knew the family?'

'It was me that searched the house with a toothcomb, practically,' said Geordie. 'Teddy and Benwick too.' This as an afterthought.

By then they were in the kitchen, and Jem fairly goggled at the sight of it. It was a great, high-ceilinged room, recently whitewashed and dominated by a vast cedar table, scarred and scored with years of work. Christopher was in his basket, tucked underneath it, sheltering in the shade afforded by the tabletop, while the women worked around it, a mixing bowl between them. Faith was whisking eggs, Judith sifting flour, and Theresa Hennessey cutting fine cubes of butter from a block. It was all so reassuringly _normal_ that Jem could have wept with the relief of it.

'…I _knew_ ,' Theresa Hennessey was saying as they came into the room. 'I didn't always…but I saw the bank book. Al our money, going to her. Birthdays and presents and I don't know…when we barely ever seemed able to survive. I didn't see how he _could_ …'

All the while Theresa Hennessey went on dicing butter, the block waxing slender under her application of the paring knife. 'And then I saw _her_ – '

'Grace?' said Judith, as she squinted over the flour measure.

'Iris,' said Theresa. 'They said she was Able's. They lied to me – all of them. I believed them, for years I believed them. And then – back in the spring, I guess – she came in for something. Milk pail, darning egg, I don't remember…I saw her eyes.'

There was something not right about the baking smell, Jem thought. All the usual smells of a kitchen; brown sugar, eggs, flour, the greasiness of butter as Theresa Hennessey went on slicing it…and something else.

'You saw her eyes,' said Judith softly.

'Just the colour Christian's were,' said Theresa. It took a heartbeat too long to realise she meant Admiral Hennessy. Jem's attention was anyway elsewhere. On the butter and _something_ mingling noxiously in the air.

 _Blood_ , Jem realised with a jolt. Brown sugar, eggs, flour, the greasiness of butter, and _blood_. There was, in fact, no more butter. The paring knife, still mechanically operated by Theresa Hennessey, had shifted its attention to the skin of her index finger. Jem lurched, but Faith got there first. 'We'll just put a plaster on this, shall we,' she said, as though to a child. Lacking the supplies, she tore a strip off her apron and began to fasten it hastily around Theresa Hennessey's battered fingers. The smell of blood and butter was pungent. Under the table, Christopher began to wail in his basket.

'I never noticed,' said Theresa. Left purposeless, her free hand began to flail with abandon, knife and all. Jem's stomach plummeted. She said, 'I just wanted…I had to make him see he had hurt me. That she had. They all had.'

'Here, I'll do that,' said Judith, and gently eased the knife from between Theresa's fingers. Geordie emerged apologetically from the shadows.

'You put it together,' said Theresa Hennessey, seeing him. Geordie nodded. He took Theresa's arm in his and led her from the kitchen table, unresisting.

'The Doctor's idea. Because of the little girl's eyes – the same way you realised.'

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'None of it matters. They,' with a jerk of her head in the direction of the other farm, 'had so _much_. They didn't know…didn't know what it was to be cut off, alone…to have no one to…'

'I know,' said Geordie, still gentle.

'No, you don't.'

'No,' said Judith fiercely. 'He doesn't. I do. I know what it is to have family snatched away from you. To watch them turn away one by one until it's the two of you and the world and nothing else. And it's _hard_. I _know_ it's hard. To be among strangers, even to you own family. They didn't even want aught to do with the babies, when they were born. Wouldn't visit, much less touch them. We lived on their doorstep and it might have been miles away. And then we came here, and knew no one, and that was hell too, because I _still_ knew no one, _still_ had no one on my side – except him, do you see? It's not _easy_ – good God, is anything worthwhile? But it _can_ work. It _does_. If you want it to. If you fight tooth and claw for it.'

The room had gone still in the way churches went still, even to the denseness of the air. It was as if all the breath had gone out of the room when Judith began speaking and no one dared resume the effort. Even Christopher had ceased his wailing, though the blooming dampness across Faith's bodice vouched for his remaining as yet, unfed.

'I mustn't have wanted it enough then,' said Theresa Hennessey. 'Or maybe I was just tired of fighting.'

Teddy took over charge of Mrs. Hennessey. Wordlessly he escorted her out of the kitchen, the better, Jem supposed, to miss the way Geordie took his wife in his arms, much less his own reunion with Faith. He laid his head in her lap and wept after all at the sheer relief.

'When did you realise?' said Faith, stroking his hair.

'Not soon enough,' said Jem. 'We were sitting at the dollhouse, you know that one Rachel and Tibby are such devotees of – '

'The _dollhouse?_ ' said Faith, incredulous.

'There wasn't a chess set to hand,' said Jem. Then, impulsively, 'Promise me, no more wandering off to make scones with murderers?'

'Promise,' said Faith, and kissed the crown of his head.

* * *

Later, Jem would sit in the gallery and attend the trial, greedy for the evidence Geordie and Teddy offered up against Theresa Hennessey. He did not even catch himself thinking, as he so often had when summoned to testify on the medical particulars of a case previously, _Needs must_. Instead, he thought of that sun-struck bedroom, and Christopher still with his newborn softness, _Because I have set my love upon you_ …

Still later, in the thick of a midge-heavy evening at the Carlisle house, Jem paused in his building of a fire in the garden and said to Geordie, 'They're sentencing Theresa Hennessey tomorrow.'

'I haven't forgotten,' said Geordie.

Judith had opened the windows the better to let the night air in, and now came tumbling out of it the sound of Teddy in glad romp with the Gremlins.

'Circus!' they were squealing, 'Circus, Teddy!' Christopher burbled and Tibby – at least Jem guessed it was Tibby – giggled. Just discernible over them was the murmur of the women as they laid out a tea tray to take outside.

'Shall I call for you in the morning?' said Geordie as the door swung off the latch and disgorged the gremlin circus onto the lawn.

'Please,' said Jem.

'You know,' said Geordie, eyes on his children, 'you don't have to come. It's not built into your contract, or anything.'

'Well,' said Jem, 'but I do, don't I? Especially to this one.'

'You mean as a point of honour?'

'No,' said Jem. 'I mean because…' but there were no words. He nodded in the direction of the tea-laden Judith, Faith with her arms full of Christopher. 'I must be able to tell them it's over,' he said. 'That that won't ever happen again. Is that absurd?'

'Not at all,' said Geordie.

Geordie called for them midway through breakfast. One of Teddy's grand affairs with all the trimmings. If Faith studiously avoided the blood pudding, there was nothing so odd in that. She had never liked it, in Jem's memory, since they had come home. 'I'll have your portion,' he said, earning him a raised eyebrow. Teddy nearly dropped the platter of bacon, to Tuesday's extacy.

'What?' said Jem to him, 'you did make it for eating, didn't you?'

'Doc…'began Teddy, but Kitty hushed him. Then Geordie was there, top hat in hand, bowing to the party at the spindly-legged table.

Jem rose to greet him. Faith gingerly followed. 'I've been meaning to ask,' she said, 'would you mind very much if I came too?'

Jem openedh is mouth to say that yes, he'd mind very much. He closed it again. Breifly he considered saying it was nothing she should have to see, considered the ensuing row, and rejected that too.

'It's hell for me too,' she said softly. 'Please.'

'I thought it was babes and dogs you weren't supposed to let see half-done work?' said Jem.

'No, well,' said Faith, 'not great for doctors either. It makes us twitchy. That's a yes then, is it?'

'I didn't realise you were asking permission,' said Jem, and improbably they all laughed.

When it came to it though, he was grateful for the feel of her hand folded into his. It was a different prison, which Jem hadn't expected. But of course, he thought, standing there with Faith's calloused fingers wrapped around his, of course they kept the women separate. So it was a different room, though equally windowless, with a woman in Morning Dress, that they negotiated their way to. Jo was reassuringly the same, from kind eyes and too-wide mouth to the green of his stole. If his eyes widened slightly at the sight of Faith, golden and elegant in her finery, he quickly adjusted himself, and greeted her too with the tired half-smile these occasions roused.

The woman in Morning Dress was perhaps more present than the grey-flannelled man had ever been. Not that that took much, Jem thought. Still, he was glad. Somehow it seemed unbearable that Faith should stomach the hopeless, drearness of the grey-flannelled man and his charges. Now Jem listened to the sentence, joined Jo in the old prayer, and was surprised at how easily it came. He had expected it to stick in his throat, but Faith was there, her hands warm with blood, her pulse close enough to touch. _Forgive us our debts,_ he murmured and found, improbably that he could afford to mean it.

It seemed almost indecent, when it came to the point, to watch the graceful plummeting of Theresa Hennessey to her doom. And yet, someone had to do it. As much, Jem realised, as he watched the floor drop away, for her family – such as it had been – as for his own. _Someone_ had to know what had happened. Almost he looked away. And then Faith squeezed his hand, _I am here_ , and he caught the scent of her rose-water, and the world steadied. Theresa Hennessey fell graceful as a leaf on the wind. There was no need to speed her progress.

* * *

Outside again, Jem gulped the fresh air with avidity. It was still too hot to be bearable, the air weighted and dense as a fruitcake, but after the windowless interior of the prison it hardly mattered. Squinting into the sunlight he could just discern the black flag overhead, proclaiming a death.

'That's that then,' he said.

'And little Iris and her mother?'

'All well,' said Geordie, joining them. 'They'll stay on at the Able Hennessey place. Much better for them, I imagine.'

'They seemed good people,' said Jem, 'the little I talked to them.'

'Mind you,' said Faith, 'so did she. Judith did say she thought Mrs Hennessey unwell.'

'Said it for years,' agreed Geordie. 'Would that someone had listened. Might have spared a lot of grief all round.'

They set off down the road, Faith's arm tucked securely into Jem's. To Geordie, ovr her shoulder she said as they went, 'What changed?'

'Sorry?' said Geordie.

'Judith's family. The way you talk about Christmases they obviously put in an appearance now.'

'Some of them do,' agreed Geordie. 'Remind me to tell you the whole of it next time the others are wrangling eleventh-hour wedding details.'

'This late in the day?' said Jem. 'They'd better not be.' And he found that with the others around him and Larkrise before him, it was possible to laugh unconcernedly, notwithstanding the morning they had spent. What was it Mother had said all those years ago to Dad? _I will willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy_?* He'd thought it was one of her fancies, growing up. Now his thumb traced the old circlet of pearls where it nested on Faith's finger, sheltered by her wedding band, and thought after all Mother had the right of it. And if she could bear the rough patches along with the good, so could they all. And there was so much good, Jem thought as Larkrise came into view, at home and at Ingleside, and in any number of as yet undiscovered corners of the world. And they'd weather it all together.

* * *

* _Anne's House of Dreams_

 _I, in the rhyming alphabet Jem is thinking of at the beginning, by the by, is an ' Ill Man, hated by all', at least in the version I learned._


	20. Where N Takes M

_I was going to delay this a bit. But you did seem to want a wedding, and I suppose I had promised you one, so here we are. With love and gratitude to all of you. May you enjoy it as much as I did the writing of it. (And direct all dance-related inquiries my way. I will happily give you condensed lectures for hours. Really. You do it at your own risk.)_

* * *

In the Evensong attic room, Poppy pinned Mara's hair and observed to her reflection, 'I'm glad of course – but I can't help feeling it should be one of your sisters doing this.'

'In another life,' said Mara, 'even years ago, I suppose it would have been.' She reached a hand backwards over her shoulder and folding one of Poppy's small, childish hands into hers, and said, 'If it comes to that, Mouse, we've always been that to each other, no?'

Notwithstanding a mouthful of pins, Poppy risked laughing. 'I suppose we have. From that first moment when we arrived at Swallowgate and found none of the others had got there yet. Do you remember?'

'We had to hunt the key, I think.'

'Yes, and you found it round the back under that old, unstable bench.' Poppy finished with the pins, fished the remainder from her mouth, and stood back to look at her work, nodding solemn approval. She had woven it into a thick crown, and it seemed there was no angle at which the sun did not catch it and tease out half a dozen colours at once.

Now she offered Mara a sheath of flowers – lady's smock and bluebells– and said, 'Whose idea were those?'

'Not mine,' said Mara, mildly. ' Shirley wanted to see how they looked. Not something that was possible when he arranged for my having them at graduation.'

'No,' said Poppy. 'I suppose not.' Impulsively she pulled Mara, flowers and all, into a hug, and kissed her cheek. 'I'm glad,' she said. 'I was beginning to think I was never going to get down to anyone's wedding, the way news of them kept arriving after the fact. If you'd asked me –I should have said it would be Catkin's wedding I was guaranteed, not yours.'

'I'm sure there's still time to arrange it,' said Mara. 'You go down to the station – you can still catch the midmorning express if you run – and I'll see what I can do about – '

'Don't you _dare_ ,' said Poppy, laughing. At the door she stopped, threaded Mara's arm through hers, and said, 'I can't help feeling I'm supposed to be imparting last-minute wisdom or something. But seeing as it was _you_ offering _me_ advice on that theme not all that long ago, I rather think it would be redundant.' For which reason they set off towards St Margaret's Anglican Church laughing, Poppy's wrist still stinging with the pinch Mara administered.

* * *

There were, of course, several dozen things not right about the service in Susan Baker's book, starting with the cat walking brazenly along the table laid out with the food that no one appeared to notice. The girls even appeared to _indulge_ it, though no one seemed able to account for its presence, never mind its being certainly the most battered cat Susan had ever seen, and Susan remembered Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde. But there it was, tail like an arrogant question mark, mincing between her fruitcake and a platter of Nan's plum puffs, jet black and bold as you please. There was also a weird long-backed dog, with an outsized nose and coarse grey fur leaping on all and sundry and generally getting underfoot, but that was to be expected. Susan had long ago resigned herself to Jem's propensity to acquire indecent-looking canines of dubious manners.

And all that was before she started on the high vaulted ceiling of St Margaret's with its spectacle of a rose window crowning the altar and sending swathes of gemmed sunlight across the floor. The sone of the walls was inset periodically with little ironwork icons Susan couldn't begin to understand and didn't altogether want to, while the pews were lined with vast cushioned boards that the small fry kicked down with noisy abandon at all the wrong moments.

Then there was the small detail of no one being able to agree about the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer or – unaccountably – the words of the Creed. If pressed, Susan had to admit to anticipating the quandary of the Doxology. Rosemary Meredith still dropped it at odd moments, Susan couldn't help but notice. But the _Creed_ \- well, all Susan could say was that she had thought all God-fearing Christians agreed on _that_ at least.

Jem's Inspector and family got on rather well, she saw, as did Poppy. Susan had even heard Faith turn to her during some part of the order of service and murmur, 'You're managing remarkably well, to say you were always at Patterson Street with us.' And Poppy had flashed Faith a smile and whispered back that while she might have learned languages sharing a room with Faith, Faith had had the nerve to go off to England, and that had left Poppy in a fine way to inhale stray pieces of other people's theology late at night. Anyway, Peter's church had been St. Margaret's. She thought Faith knew.

Meanwhile Susan took leave to doubt Dr. Blythe's numerous assurances that this wasn't a Roman service, citing the Latin of _Exsultate Iuste in Domine_ , which was anyways a decidedly Romish choice for an anthem. She dared anyone to say anything to the contrary. Not that Susan was an expert on music, but she knew what a Presbyterian motet sounded like, and it wasn't _Exsultate Iuste_. The Glen church choir would never have had it. Of course, the Glen church choir never _could_ have had it, having perhaps five singers all told to St Margaret's ample 20, but that was another matter entirely.

The Psalm had been perplexing. Not metric like all good, Presbyterian psalms, but the territory of the choir exclusively, and halfway between speech and singing. Of course, it was a lovely text, _All the ends of the earth shall sing_ , Susan wasn't quibbling with _that_ , but it _wasn't_ normal, and that she would tie to.

None of it mattered a jot. Whatever the confusion of the liturgy or the unwieldiness of the hymnody – the organ had decidedly sprung _Quo Quantum Qualia_ in its full, Latinate glory on the Glen St Mary folk, and Susan would tie to that too – one thing was vastly apparent; her little brown boy was radiant with happiness. Mrs. Dr. dear had always talked fancifully of wishing cups full of joy for all her children, and though Susan had never liked to say it, it had always sounded more the stuff of faerie stories to her than it had of real life. Now Susan dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief long-since rendered ineffective by overuse, and thought she understood better what it meant. So there was a cat weaving between the fruitcake and a platter of Nan's plum puffs, a dog writhing in ecstasies of attention on the floor, and the service had teetered dangerously on the verge of the Romish after a fashion to scandalize Mrs Marshall Eliot. So nothing. Shirley looked as if he had been handed the sun. Let it never be said that Susan Baker was not content with that.

* * *

Gilbert Blythe leaned against a nearby pillar the better to take in the spectacle of his children and their partners as they danced away the hours. It couldn't have looked less like the refined and up-to-date stuff of little Rilla's wedding if it had tried. Presently, in a musical feet that had always defeated Gilbert, the dancers were negotiating half diagonal reels of four for _Mairi's Wedding_ , the giddy rhythm of it apparently as nothing to his children as they slipped right shoulders in skip-change step. Some of them, he noticed – the ones really at home with the measure – were singing and dancing their way through it. _Step we gaily on we go_ …If they got to the verse about the fish and the children, he supposed there would be one more thing to add to the list of things wreaking havoc on poor Susan's nerves.* How many measures was this one? 32 bars? No, 40, that was it.

He caught Anne's eye across the room where she laughed over some shared joke with Phil, and was distracted into reminiscences of his own first dance with her. Hadn't he thought himself king of the world then? He could still hear the strains of the old music in the background, picture the outline of the town hall and the unforgettable look of Anne as she climbed into the sleigh, nerves practically humming with excitement. There had been snow and he had tucked furs snuggly round her while Silver Spot stomped his feet in impatience and all manner of enticing smells drifted out of the Green Gables kitchen window. It had been blissful.

They were on to _Shiftin' Bobbins_ now. That was all right; Susan's nerves were spared. Though _why_ the musicians thought this dance a clever idea after the cheerful chaos of the _Mairi's Wedding_ , Gilbert would have paid dearly to know. The Manse lot, after years of watching formations at a distance, were at a distinct disadvantage. Carl's one eye was helping him not at all in keeping track of whether he should be casting behind or leading Una up the set. Una, bless her, had marginally more idea and considerably more patience.

Ken Ford, meanwhile, had no idea what a Wheel on the Side was, much less who his corners were. Gilbert noticed this with a grin, even as he admitted this shouldn't be nearly so entertaining as he found it – after all, as Pricilla Grant had been wont to say when she heard it called in their Redmond years, ' _No one_ knows how to dance it!' She wasn't wrong either; Gilbert had never seen _Shiftin' Bobbins_ danced flawlessly. He himself had had a decidedly disastrous brush with it in A.V.I.S. days. Something about his perpetually turning to Anne, when in fact Ruby had been his dancing partner and Anne only the standing fourth lady.

It wasn't only Wheels and corners Ken Ford didn't understand; he had lost the progression of the dance and didn't seem to realize he had to do the whole lot again from second place. The grin spread broader and Gilbert was heartened by the revelation that Rilla too was trying not to laugh as she pulled Ken haphazardly up and down the set. They reached the bottom and Gilbert's attention shifted to Shirley, whose occasion this was anyway, and who appeared sufficiently fluent in reels and wheels of all sorts that no one needed to propel _him_ through turning his corners. If he _did_ keep looking across the set to Mara, well, chalk that up to the hallmark of a dancer that knew what he was doing.

He and Anne, of course, had danced strathspeys most, Gilbert remembered. How he had revelled in the luxury of the slow time and the way he only had to touch her to make her follow. He had come dangerously near kissing her that first dance, as he recalled, lulled by the music and the revelry of the evening, until at the gate to Green Gables the _No Trespass_ sign had sprung up again and he had relented with a thought for the nerves of ministering angels Rachel Lynde and Marilla Cuthbert – to say nothing of the finer feelings of certain elven would-be Elaines.

He was pulled back into the immediate present by a voice at his elbow and a tap on the shoulder.

'Shall I tell you who he reminds me of?' said Jo Blake, nodding in the direction of the newlyweds.

'Who's that then?' said Gilbert, startling in spite of himself.

'You,' said Jo, and grinned. 'At your wedding. It's the look on your face to every last article. Like the cat who's got the cream, and utterly unbelieving. As if he keeps half expecting to open his eyes and find the whole thing a dream.'

Gilbert laughed. 'You and Highland Sandy,' he said. 'You should have heard him after Rilla's wedding – where had Shirley got her from and did he never worry she'd vanish into the mist some morning.'

'Anything in it, do you think?'

'Only if Highland Sandy's faeries are known for getting positively superstitious about death. I wouldn't know, obviously, coming from good, Presbyterian Avonlea. Though I have the most vivid memory of fighting like anything to convince her no one was dying of that 'flu on my watch at Swallowgate. It struck me as singularly human – if not a little of what Susan would call Roman. But you,' prodding Jo in the ribs, 'must have worked alongside enough opinionated Scots to have an answer to that conundrum. What do you think?'

Jo laughed and shook his head. 'I humbly submit that to judge from appearances, no one is thinking of vanishing anywhere.'

Gilbert nodded. He said, 'That's about where I come down on the subject too.'

They began to negotiate their way through the assembled masses, now deep in the nuances of the Petronella Turn, to where Anne and Phil stood talking over the finer points of what sounded like the new church mission statement, passing in the process the unlikely alliance of Susan Baker and Elspeth McNeilly, who appeared to be agreeing heartily on all the things in the service that should have been done differently, had things been entrusted to them.

'Not, of course,' said Gilbert in an undertone to Jo, 'that we'd be here _now_ had that happened. The absurd thing is that the offence Susan really wouldn't forgive would have been Mara capitulating.'

'You think so?' said Jo, hastily dodging out of the way of an especially narrow set and stumbling over a pair of young McNeilly children.

'Certain. If you can change your mind on God, you know, in Susan's book there's no telling what else you'll change it on.'

Jo said tolerantly, 'I knew I liked Susan Baker.'

'Susan,' said Gilbert, 'to use colloquial parlance, is a brick. And Anne strongly suspects her of enjoying the odd argument – whether it's with Woodrow Wilson long-distance or more immediately on the language one conducts a baptism in. So that's all right. Besides, not even Susan can argue the children didn't give their adults fair say before declaring it a hopeless case.'

Jo laughed, expressed the opinion that Gilbert was as incorrigible as ever, and raised a hand in salutation to Anne and Phil. In the interval it had taken to reach them they had requisitioned Judith, and Anne was now mid-anecdote.

'…It turned out that Walter _would_ keep introducing them to guests. Susan was quite distracted with it. Because, you see, he always began – '

' _This is God_ ,' said Gilbert, anticipating her ending, ' _and this is My God_.'**

The little party succumbed helplessly to laughter.

'Lovely, isn't it?' said a starry-eyed Anne, recovering, as she tucked her hand into the crease of Gilbert's elbow.

'I shouldn't let Susan here you say that,' said Gilbert, the Blythe smile wide and bright on his face. 'The way Di tells it, it was all she could do to get away from a Baker Inquisition on how Susan could possibly tell Miss Cornelia about the service without invoking censure.'

'Well,' said Anne, 'it's unquestionably a conundrum, that. Though I can't think when Susan got hold of her. She's hardly sat a dance out.'

'Oh?' said Gilbert, and turned his head setwards again, only to find that indeed, his daughter was just discernible a swirl of fiery hair and luscious brown crepe. When he refocused his attention on his friends, it was to hear Anne say, 'Even Susan can't contest the splendour of it. All the incense – didn't it smell the way you picture the Holy Land? It made me think of Keats – _nor what soft incense hangs upon the bough_. I don't believe I understood it so well before. And of course, the music was a golden cloud of sound, don't you think? But really,' hastening on in the face of Gilbert's upraised eyebrows, 'the loveliest thing of all was seeing them all so happy, and remembering what it was like for us at our wedding – with all our people around us and in our right place. It does bring it back, don't you think?'

Gilbert kissed her forehead in affirmation, Phil laughed. 'Even unto the unwanted fuss,' she said, eyes gleaming. Jo said, 'Don't tell me you're thinking of leaping over the parapet, Anne. By all accounts the Mother's Union would be short its staunchest member if you did, and I really can't afford to stand idly by and let that happen. Who would stand up for the next lot of Merediths and Vances?' Here Phil leaned across their circle to rap her husband's hand smartly with the edge of the fan she carried and Anne laughed. She shook her head gaily and said, 'Oh, I couldn't possibly! Think what it would do to Marilla and Rachel Lynde. They'd haunt me, I know they would.'

Over the way, the musicians swapped _Wisp of Thistle_ for _The Minister on the Loch._ Gilbert offered his arm to Anne and said, 'Shall we? I think I just about remember the geography of this one.'

'I _certainly_ do,' said Anne. 'A Diamond Poussette leads to top couple dancing down for two, around for two, up for two – don't look so surprised, dearest. At half past sixteen I thought _Diamond Poussette_ one of the most romantic sounding steps there was.'

There was more laughter as they turned to join the amassing sets, the Blakes following them. Geordie appeared at Judith's elbow arm extended.

'I would just as soon spare your toes,' said Judith, with a smile for him. Then, from the shelter of his arms she added, 'Nice they were all able to be here. They even seem to be enjoying the occasion.'

Geordie hummed ascent, the sound muffled by her hair and the lace that covered it.

'Tell me, my sweet,' he said, and bent to kiss her forehead, 'was it worth it?'

'Always,' said Judith.

* * *

Mara was combing out her hair when Shirley came in, the sight of it a weave of long golds, and wheaten yellows, honeys, ambers, maizes and ochres, and here and there stray threads of coppery red. He came and sat on the bed, transfixed by the sight of it, and Mara went on with it as if this were the most natural thing in the world; perhaps it was. The sheer mundanity of it struck Shirley forcibly somewhere between ribs and gut, the deep-seated knowledge that this was now inextricably theirs, a ritual to be shared between them always, would she allow of it.

'May I?'

'Of course,' said Mara, and handed the brush over her shoulder to him, never so much as turning her head, though her voice registered warm with amusement.

'Where did you leave off?' he wanted to know, taking brush and her hair it in hand. The weight of it shocked him; he had always known Mara's hair to be fine, even fly-away in the temperamental Island weather. Now it lay half-coiled around his arm, massy and unexpectedly heavy, so that Shirley heard himself say, 'You never thought to cut it? The others did, I know.'

'Would you prefer I did?'

'No,' said Shirley, with unwarranted vehemence. Then by way of emendation, 'I mean, I'd have you do whatever you like, Ariel.'

'You're all right,' said Mara, 'I can't imagine it another way either.' Her hand came back over her shoulder again in improbably acrobatic gesture, and found his, still with the worn grain of the cherrywood brush in his hand, and closed around both. He had finished with combing her hair out in any case. Now Shirley said, 'You plait it, don't you? At night?'

'That's right,' then, with archness, 'there are people who might ask how you know that.'

'Yes, but I should have said you, of all people, weren't one of them. Tell me if I pull to tight, won't you?'

'You're all right,' said Mara again, and reprising their earlier theme, said, 'Poppy, you know, could never bear long hair, especially in the summer. Though I don't think she'd have risked her mother's temper over it had she not had fashion on her side. But you know me,' turning her head suddenly so that Shirley caught the play of the light across the blue of her eyes, 'how did Ruthie Blake used put it? Hand in hand with an older world?'

'It was a good world,' said Shirley.

'So is this,' said Mara. In what seemed no time at all she rose from the dresser and turned to face him, the ghost of the plait he had woven for her lingering still at his fingertips. The air was pregnant with expectation, taut as a bow-string on the verge of snapping. Shirley felt it as a prickling of his spine. Mara must have too, because she offered him a smile and said, 'Hardly an old dance, this, is it?'

'No,' said Shirley, 'but –not quite the same, is it? It matters more, or something.'

'Something like that,' said Mara.

Shirley kissed her mouth, thinking at least he remembered how that went, and then her throat, and it was there he registered finally the root of the thing that lay between them, her heartbeat like a drum at the height of a dance, rapid-fire and darting. In all the time they had known each other, Shirley thought, they must have learned almost every iteration of the other. But not this. He had never known Mara to be nervous, and that as much as anything, startled him. Gently, he let her go.

She said, 'However did the others rush into it, do you think? Even at our most reckless, we never ran to that.'

That made Shirley laugh, and emboldened, he touched a hand to the sheen of the ribbon that closed her chemise.

'May I?' he said again.

'I rather think that's the idea,' said Mara, still with amusement colouring her voice, and yet, for all that, Shirley could feel unease like a draught humming over her skin as they stood there in the islanded everywhere of the bedroom, the fine voile of her shift smooth under his fingers. Now they stilled, and he said, 'You've reminded me, Ariel, I've a gift for you.'

'There was no need of that,' said Mara gently, but Shirley shook his head. 'I've an idea there is –I mean, it's not really grand enough to call a wedding present,' he said, surfacing a worn leather pouch from the recess of a pocket. 'Only I thought they'd appeal to you.'

That won another laugh from Mara, who had by then undone the drawstring of the pouch and was cradling its contents in one cupped hand. Dozens of little seeds like hearts spilled across her fingers, burnished by the moonlight where it filtered through the window and struck them. As quickly as it had bubbled to the surface, Shirley felt the thread of tension in her unravel like a seam.

'Whatever made you think of it?' asked Mara, and it was Shirley's turn to laugh.

'Oh, any number of things. I said before, you might give me a little credit for knowing you, Ariel. I thought your supply couldn't run on forever, and I did tell you once I knew what they were. And God knows all the Glen babies are wanted ones at the moment. I can't imagine Dad will miss these, be prevention ever so much better than cure.'

It seemed Mara shivered, but there was warmth in her voice when she said, 'Much better.' Then, almost as an afterthought, certainly unconcernedly, 'You realize, of course the world will expect –'

'It can expect whatever it likes,' said Shirley, and laughed himself. 'But it has no business _here_.'

'Well that's all right,' said Mara, 'as long as we're agreed on that.'

It was easy after that, to kiss her, to fold her hand in his and lead her towards the bed, spread with the old Steps to the Altar quilt of years ago.

Dimly he registered the quilt with its plethora of little triangles, and the creeping shadow of Pilgrim as he eeled through the open window, having after all found them out for the evening. More immediately his attention was for Mara; the kiss she returned him, the way in settling she fitted herself to him, how instinctive, right, seamless this coming together of body and soul.

 _It matters more_ , he had said not long ago, and that was undeniably part of it. The ceremony and ritual of the day duly observed it seemed there was a weight to the thing and that made it almost new. Time, Shirley thought, kissing her throat, as much as anything, was part of it –that _was_ new. It stretched before them, unchartered and longer even than the day, a luxury that in all those stolen half-hours and snatched interludes, had never been theirs. To linger over kisses and feel the worn pads of her fingers as they sketched a map of his body, to savour the heat and the taste and the touch of her as body and soul were consecrated one to another, hearts equally fast and impossibly near, felt almost like an indulgence. He luxuriated in it as a sunbeam; they both did.

It was afterwards, enfolded in the long blue summer twilight and the quilting of the Steps to the Altar quilt, that Shirley felt it, the rising up of so many things between them, untouchable and half-spoken these last few years; redress, he supposed, for the weight and ritual, the ceremony and permanence of the contract between them. Mara touched a hand to his face, and said, 'You never used to greet, _a chuisle_.'

'That's a new one,' said Shirley, ''heart,' is it?' He gloried quietly in the flicker of surprise that passed over her face like a sunburst. He reached across the distance between them and swept a stand of her hair over her shoulder, exposing the branch of her neck, white and slender. 'I knew someone who could speak it,' Shirley said, carefully, by way of explanation. 'Asked him to teach me –odd words, enough to understand, not to speak it.'

Mara hummed, a sound like crickets starting up of a throbbing summer evening. 'It's more…' one hand traced the edge of the quilt as the right words eluded her, fingers disappearing into the tapered seam of the binding. 'More _blood that runs in my veins_ -you'd say it of kindred. But with you, well it's always been like that with you.' Then, with a smile, ''Heart' likely does as well.'

'I don't know,' said Shirley, 'I was rather thinking I liked your version better. You'd have liked Cameron. I mean, you'd have got on.'

'I expect so,' said Mara. Easily she closed the distance between them and laid her head on his chest, and for a heartbeat Shirley could think of nothing but the clean jasmine scent of her hair, the world a close and circled thing around them, allaying even the long shadow of the war. 'I wish,' he said softly now, 'you could have met.'

'Can't we then?'

'No,' said softer still, one hand mapping hollow of her throat, the shell of her ear. 'No,' and then disjointedly, as though it were nought to do with anything, certainly not meaning to say it, 'They were all dying. Around me, even the best of our company –especially them, it seemed in dark hours. We'd go up in the air and there was nothing I could do but watch them falling like meteors.' All the while his fingers traced the shape of her, here the pocket of a knee, the arch of her back, the valley between her breasts as if it were impossible to speak on these things and be still. Perhaps it was.

'The sight of it Ariel –you've never seen anything like it. All plucked from the sky like afterthoughts.'

'No,' Mara said quietly, 'I've not seen that. But I maybe know something like it. Afterwards –when I got home –to my family – they were all dying then too. And there was nothing I could do, or the doctor could do, or anyone could do about it. We were still living with the Kerachers then, and I don't suppose that helped, so many in the one house, though it wasn't their fault. From the way it tore through the city I don't think it would have mattered how many we'd been or where we were. I'd had it by then, of course, and I watched –Alastair got it first and came through, so I thought maybe we needn't worry, that the worst of it had passed with Mouse and Di. It was only our set that were getting it then. And then the children started to get it, the babies and the mothers that nursed them…and it was all anyone could do to keep them alive. I never dared write and tell you about it in case it got into the letters and carried it to you. It had got into pretty well everything else by then. Clothes smelled of it and food tasted of it, and I thought, wherever you were, you must be near enough to it – the blueness, the blood, the mess of it – without me sending it to you care of the Canadian postal service. Nights, late when I'd sat up with Maisie or Senga or wee Tam, without even fingers enough to pray my dead, thinking of writing to your father, of begging him to come back, save I knew he must be up to his eyes in his own legion of dead, and anyway, by then I'd begun to understand how lucky we got with Poppy, with your sister, and thought even he couldn't have made a difference.'

'Dear God,' said Shirley, 'I was supposed to keep you safe. The whole point of going…that you and Nan and the others would never know what it was… If I couldn't even do that –'

'But you did. They died in their own country; that's no small thing.'

'No,' he said reluctantly, and kissed her forehead. It wasn't enough. Better – perhaps easier – was to fall into her, to kiss her and feel the junction between them bleed away in the expanse of time enough and world enough before them.

It was afterwards, heart racing and thinking her half asleep, that Shirley said, 'I would have taken that particular cup from you if I could.'

'If that's all,' said Mara drowsily, 'I might say the same. Were it possible.'

'I know,' said Shirley, stroking her hair. 'And I'm glad – I mean, I'm glad to know what it was, that lacuna. It wasn't like you, and too near the shape of the nightmare that came to me mid-flight – that I'd come back to find it had all been some protracted daydream and you had vanished into thin air. Oh, I thought of asking,' seeing her about to speak, 'but it never felt a safe subject to touch. I knew enough of you by then, Ariel, to be wary of breaking whatever charm you were weaving in the spaces between by speaking. Was I wrong?'

He felt more than heard her laughter, the leaping of her abdomen, the contracting of her diaphragm behind her ribs. 'No,' Mara said, her fingers curling between the knots of his spine, the crescents of her nails biting deep into his skin. 'It was something very like that. But,' with a kiss to his collarbone, 'for what it's worth – no one is vanishing anywhere. I am here. Always.'

* * *

 _*The verse Gilbert is thinking of, if you don't know Lewis Isle Bridal Song, runs;_

 _Plenty bow and plenty kneel,  
Plenty fish tae fill her creel,_  
 _Plenty bonnie bairns as weel,_  
 _All for sake of Mairi_

 _And now I've gifted you that particular earworm; if you do know your dances, you'll notice the dancers are dancing one or two of these precipitately by a few years. This owes to these dances being ones that have geography that is both interesting and easily described. But you'll know best if I'm right on that point._

 _** From Anne of Ingleside_


	21. Come By Here

_This would be where I finally do what I've been meaning to for chapters and tell you we're nearing the end. Just a chapter after this, and then I'm on to other projects. To all of you reading and/or reviewing, thank you. I love knowing you're there, and I love hearing from you._

 _You may also notice I've done away with a mystery title again. Nan and Jerry never got them, so neither do Shirley and Mara, mostly because there's nothing clever to be done with Five Red Herrings_, _which is the obvious choice, as you'll appreciate if you know your way through Sayers._

* * *

 _You've never smelt the tangle of the Isles_ said the song as they had heard it during the war. It was supposed to have been heartening; whether it was or not, Shirley couldn't say. But it wasn't wrong, thought Shirley now as they crested the hill to the house. It was late, and still the sun was high, a deep velveteen blue its concession to the evening. The air shouldn't have been vastly different from the Island, all told, certainly not from the Harbour Light – salted and cold-tasting against the soft palate. This was wilder in spite of the vast flatness of the outstretched road. Something to do with the way the heather ran riot, musky white blooms drooping to kiss the earth and the sweet tang of the gorse – everywhere and determined to ensure all travellers knew it, as protruding branches snared ankles and exposed limbs. Mara had described it as smelling of coconut; she hadn't been wrong.

'Is it so different now?' he asked as they came over the rise of the road, the long grasses, musky heather and the tang of the gorse falling away in the face of the wind coming towards them.

'Not at all,' said Mara. 'It's not even smaller; I thought it would maybe be that at least. Things so often are if you're remembering them from a child.'

Ahead a croft window twitched and a stout person in assorted greys hastened down the track to meet them. She raised a hand in greeting, her exclamation lost over the breaking of the water on the nearby shore and the whistle of the wind as it came across the sea. Without appearing to think to do it, Mara raised her own hand and called out a greeting. Shirley smiled in spite of himself; without appearing to realise it she had slipped back into the habit of _Gàidhlig_ like breathing. He blamed the sameness Bara Island. Whatever the cause, it delighted the approaching personage and increased the rate of the bustling, so that presently a woman drew up before them short of breath and verily beaming. 'They told us,' she said as she clutched her side, 'you were from Away.'

'Well,' said Shirley, lest she be left with the impression she had been misinformed, 'I certainly am. You've known it before.' This with a nod to Mara.

' _Years_ ago,' said Mara. To which their still unnamed host only shook her head and said, 'But you've never lost the sound of it,' evidently delighted.

'No,' said Mara, 'There was never the chance.'

The woman in grey nodded, and then went on nodding like a contented pigeon another minute before the wind began to sting even _her_ and she recalled her errand. Noisily she parted with the keys, swithering between languages as suited her, so that Shirley quite gave up on parsing the conversation, taking away only that she was one Domenica MacDaird. They turned up a wynd half-obscured in a magnificent hedge of gorse, and he just caught 'I'll show you how to go, shall I,' before losing the thread again and bracing himself for the teeth of the gorse. He could see why Mara had missed it though; the smell of it was like a sunburst, rich, buttery and sweet in a way that conjured memories of the coconuts his father had brought home from one of his more extravagant Charlottetown ventures. More than that, he could picture Mara there as she must have been, running glad riot over the countryside, racing the waves at high tide, wild-haired, bright-eyed and flowers in her arms.

The place was small, stone, of sloping roof and impeccably ordered. Someone – Shirley suspected Mrs MacDaird **–** had taken beeswax to the floors in anticipation of their coming, and crammed a pottery vase with overlong stalks of the omnipresent gorse. There was heather over the hearth and bluebells in a jam jar among the spices, and now, because someone – he had blinked and missed the ensuing wrangle – had seen fit to put the kettle on, the gently hiss of rising steam. There was more bustling as Domenica MacDaird banged open cupboards and exposed their contents in conjunction with Mara's milder inspection of them. Shirley found the tea nested in a gold-plated tin on the heart of the kitchen table and handed it to Mara.

'You'll stay?' she said, the teuchter lilt that had been creeping back into her words ever since they left Canada turning this naturally into a question. That won a smile from Domenica MacDaird, wide as a country mile. 'Thank you,' she said, 'but no – not when you're settling and everything's new to you. Come by, and we'll do for you instead.' So saying, she slipped with surprising grace and efficacy out the latticed door and thereafter vanished into the bracken. Shirley took the pottery cup Mara handed him – Mull according to the stamp on the bottom – and said, curious, 'Are they all like that? Only that Christmas we were stranded at yours it wasn't such a different reception.'

'Always,' said Mara.

* * *

'Remind me,' said Nan, 'which one's Nottingham Lace?'

She was sitting, with Di and Poppy, in the shelter of the larches that flanked Di's boarding house, these having weathered the summer heat better than the garden. In her hand was a slip of a letter postmarked Scotland, in Mara's precise handwriting. On the other side of the Hudson bay blanket they picnicked on, Poppy grimaced over her teacup and said, 'It's the world's most unforgiving dance, is what it is.'

'Oh, it's all right,' said Di, laughing. 'The set in the middle go round two places to the outside circle's one, then you're all right.'

'You'd know all about it, of course,' said Poppy. She set her teacup down, and tucked her knees under her chin, settling into what Nan recognised as her inquisitorial attitude. 'I do get letters from the others, you know, not just you. Ariel reckons you've seen more of Halifax than she has the last year or so.'

'Ariel makes entirely too much of it,' said Di. ' _The Chronicle_ wanted pictures of rebuilt Richmond. Alastair knew the area.'

'Why?' said Nan. 'It's not even your patch.'

'Neither is the new house,' said Poppy. 'Mara has an idea you know its geography better than she does too. And none of that accounts for the dances, you know.'

Di held up both hands. She said, 'In the days of the Harbour Light, I don't seem to recall anyone called dance attendance news.'

'Oh, they're not,' said Poppy. 'Neither is you knowing them, really. I've danced with you, remember. I _know_ you're good at them, even down to the footwork. It's your going on Alastair's arm to the Redmond ones that she and Faith make news.'

'Naomi Blake too,' said Nan to her teacup, thereby missing the sisterly appeal aimed her direction. This being the case Nan watched as Di sent astray dandelion sailing ineffectually towards Poppy. It landed just short of Poppy's skirt, whence she picked it up with a laugh and began to pull its petals apart.

'No, no,' she said mild as a lamb, 'it's my turn now. I had _years_ of your ribbing.'

'Not from me you didn't!'

This time Nan caught the appeal. She said, 'You've owed me this conversation for _months_. If I have to take a side it's Mouse's.'

'You've just _had_ a wedding,' said Di with affectionate exasperation, 'isn't that enough for one season?'

'No,' said Poppy. 'Because, as I pointed out to Ariel, I was cheated out of at least two in the process.'

'That,' said Di, 'it not my fault,' and snatched the letter from her sister. 'What else does Mara say?'

'Quite a lot about the neighbours from the look of it,' said Nan. 'They appear to be of the race that knows Joseph. Or their version of it. I don't know about you, but evenings at cards would do my head in. There's also a sizeable amount Mouse is going to have to translate. Unless you've picked up Gaelic along with the dances?'

'I have not. Here, Mouse.'

'You have been going then,' said Poppy, taking the letter. 'Mara, Faith and Naomi aren't all wrong together.'

'I don't know why you're asking; you appear to have pieced it together without my input.'

'We want your version,' said Nan. 'Especially as I don't recall Mouse or I mentioning weddings; that was all you.' Poppy hummed; Nan wasn't sure this was in agreement so much as in response to the sheet of pressed paper between her fingers. Her laughter, Nan couldn't help but notice, had abated.

'Well,' said Di, not unreasonably, 'it was what you were getting at, wasn't it?' and to Poppy, before anyone could answer, 'Something wrong?'

'No-o,' said Poppy.

'Which means yes,' said Di, evidently enjoying the inquisitorial about-face.

'Well _you've_ read it,' said Poppy to Nan. 'I suppose you _could_ shake the idea we aren't getting her back?'

'Don't say things like that, Mouse. I find it very hard to unthink them.'

Poppy waved the letter at them with a vengeance and said, 'I can't help it. You don't write in a language unless you're thinking in it, do you?'

A breeze, cool and seductive swept through the larches, setting the leaves rustling. Under different circumstances they would have welcomed the reprieve it occasioned from the weather. As it was, Nan couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling it was a wind of change. Evidently Di noticed, because she swept a stray russet curl of hair out of her eyes and said, 'Don't look like that, Catkin; you're the one who started this pattern of moving away to unreachable places.'

'We'll be in Ontario by autumn,' said Nan, 'that's not unreachable. We'll even be close to Mouse. You'll notice at no point have Jerry and I _left the_ _country_.'

'No,' said Di, 'though I suppose you might, if there was a place for you that unaccountably meant _home_. Wouldn't you?'

Overhead the leaves rustled, a thrush burst into song and a chorus of cicadas started humming in the summer heat. The breeze, such as it was, wafted the scent of fading lilacs and narcissi towards them. Here and there a ladybird crawled lazily across the Hudson Bay blanket. It should have been idyllic. Nan shivered. 'I've never thought about it. I hadn't realised you had.'

'Only tangentially,' said Di, so that Poppy's eyes rounded owlishly, even as Nan's narrowed, her eyebrows drawing close together in a fashion that bore striking resemblance to a pair of chestnut knitting needles mid-stitch. 'How tangentially?'

Di shrugged. She said, 'It just came up, once we knew Mara and Shirley meant to visit Scotland. I think I asked if it was something Alastair especially wanted to do.'

That clarified the _we_ and curtailed Nan's next question, which had probably been redundant in any case.

'And?' said Poppy, when no further explanation appeared forthcoming.

'It wouldn't be the same thing at all,' said Di. 'Mara's the last of the McNeilly siblings that can remember anything about it at all. Alec could, of course, and the older children, but then there was the war and the flu...' Di shrugged, not finishing the sentence. Somehow that was enough. Poppy grimaced again, and Nan joined her. Di said, 'So it wouldn't really be like homecoming at all.'

'But it has actually come up,' said Poppy, eyes wider and more owlish than ever.

'Lots of things have come up,' said Di. 'You never did parse the rest of that letter.'

Poppy shook her head. 'Catkin's right; it's all this-and-that news. Neighbours and dances, how _Keppoch's Rant_ never leaves anyone enough time to turn a full circle – she's right on that, before you try to argue the point – and the MacDaird sheep getting into next door's clover. You know the stuff of Ariel's letters.'

'No,' said Di, 'I wouldn't. We're too usually in the same place to write.'

Poppy ignored this. She said, 'What else has come up? Besides visits to Scotland.'

Di shook her head. 'You're incorrigible, the pair of you.'

'Well,' said Nan, we're short Faith and Mara to play at matchmaking, and have to keep the end up. _We_ have letters to write too, you know. And you still haven't answered.'

'I know. It's none of it very interesting. Mostly things like what kind of work Alastair wants now graduation has been and gone, what engagements in peacetime look like – none of you gave me much of a working idea – whether or not I'd stay with _The Chronicle_ afterward. This-and-that news,' with a nod to Poppy.

Unsure which of these to tackle first, Nan said of the paper, 'Would you?'

Simultaneously Poppy dropped the letter into her tea and said as she salvaged it, 'Normal people _start_ with news of engagements, you know.'

'Only when they have them to announce,' said Di. 'This is still all very much discussion. There's time for that now, you know. Besides, I didn't like to tread on anyone's toes after all the wrangling it took to arrive at the latest of our weddings.'

'That translates roughly as you not liking fuss a bit more than Mara does,' said Nan, laughingly. Then, triumphant, 'I _told_ you so, back at Rilla's wedding, didn't I?'

Di declined to answer. She said, 'What has become of your children? Won't they be missing their mother?'

'With Mums doting on them?' asked Nan, eyes sparkling. 'Not at all. I left her telling them the story of Paul Irving's Nora and the rock people. _I am clean forgot_ or something.' And jubilantly, over the others laughter, as she pulled Di into a hug, 'I told you so, I told you so, I _told you so._ '

* * *

It had started with a rambling exploration of the island, Shirley curious to put pictures to the places he had heard Mara remember. There was the wild stretch of the shore where the waves washed up everything from pottery shards and rocks to disassembled boats, the wind of the road as it rounded the curves of the landscape, how to navigate the weave of bracken and heather, and the corners that hugged the blue-misted mountains. Somewhere along the way there had been a spring lamb caught in the mesh of a fence; it had been a matter of course to disentangle it. After that they had fallen in almost unthinking with the pattern of the island round. It had never, after all, been a holiday in the sense well-intentioned Mrs MacDaird meant, or if it had, then neither he nor Mara was good at adhering to a policy of doing nothing. So evenings with the MacDairds had become mornings in which Mara sat with the older woman and saw to the task of the hour, while Shirley in his turn inquired of lamed calves or sick piglets, coming to know the animals of Bara as he had Kingsport.

'Come by here' people had taken to saying on seeing them, and they had done. It was _good_ , almost like coming home, to exchange news of an afternoon or over a meal, to take an evening excursion to pieces after the fact. _Be sure_ , Mother had written, _to lay down a memory or two to cherish, as well as habits._ But how to tell her it wasn't so much habit they were laying down,as it was a rhythm older than the sun that fitted even to the bone and laid claim to them? It was almost as if there had never been a time prior to their being married, and yet, somehow, that did not seem the kind of thing to write in a letter to Mother. Certainly, Shirley thought, returning to the house, it wasn't a thing they had slipped into purposefully. All the same, it would certainly placate Mother to know they shifted like a shuttle from work to pleasure like breathing.

Now, with the wind blowing sharp off the water, Shirley broke the surface of the gorse and reentered the house, full of a story about the mismothered lamb over the way. He forgot it as he took in the sight of Mara enisled at the kitchen table, preoccupied with the slicing of cress.

'I shall never get used to this,' he said, sitting down at the table.

'Anything especially?'

Shirley touched a finger to the gold of her wedding band, warm with wear, and tracing the shape of it against her hand, the encircled base of her knuckle. 'All of it,' he said, oblivious to the check this placed on her work. 'I meant it, you know, that afternoon I told you I never expected my parents' brand of always-love.'

Mara let go the paring knife, lacing her hand through his where it still lay calloused and warm atop her hand. She rested her head against his chest, the smell of her, jasmine, sunlight, cress and perfume enfolding him as a cloud. He bent to kiss her head and said, 'You taste sweet. Like the gorse or your heather or something.'

'In Scotland?' said Mara, eyes starred with laughter. 'I can't imagine why.' Then, subsiding, 'It's a reciprocal sentiment, you know. The unbelief of all this.' She nodded in the direction of the kitchen, the diced vegetables and neglected paring knife, the table with its sprays of white heather and gingham check of the curtains. Shirley had the distinct impression she meant none of these things, and it made his stomach lurch in startlement.

'Is it?'

Mara hummed faintly, the sound of it prickly and ticklish against his neck. 'I hadn't counted on you and your cherishing of quickness. No one was supposed to care for it in girls.'

Shirley could only look at her in wonderment, his thumb tracing absent-minded circles on the back of her hand. 'How on _earth_ ,' he asked, unable to stem the tide of his incredulity, 'could you ever have thought that?'

Gently Mara pressed the hand that held hers. She said, 'It's your family that set store on learning, not mine; daughters weren't a luxury we could run to. You must have noticed.'

'If you mean that Christmas visit,' said Shirley, his disengaged hand tracing the shell of her ear, the coil of her hair, 'I noticed you. And the insurmountable snow – and,' with laughter, 'Alec, but only because he was hell-bent on putting the fear of God into me lest I do anything to hurt his favourite sister.'

His laughter was contagious. 'Alec _would_ do,' said Mara, catching it off of him. 'Knowing full well I'd have killed him for it, had I ever found out.'

'I have no trouble believing that,' Shirley said. 'What I can't picture is what else would you have done. I can't see you at all without your work.'

'If you mean what was I meant to do,' said Mara, 'three guesses as to that. What do girls usually do that don't go on to universities?'

Shirley clicked his tongue softly in incomprehension. He must have looked it too, because Mara said laughingly, 'You might look to your Rilla for a hint.'

That brought understanding like a jolt of lightening; Shirley felt it somewhere in his midsection as it badly singed some vital organ or other. Abruptly he turned to face her properly, dislodging her in the process from the nest she had made of his shoulder.

'But,' said Shirley, incredulous, 'Rilla wanted her wedding from the first. She'd had ideas of how it would look long before there was a war or even a Ken Ford to fit in with the scheme. It's not the same at all. What would you have done, married straight out of school?'

'If that's all,' said Mara, 'it's not so uncommon as all that.' There was a smile, or something like it, tugging at her mouth. 'I could have done.'

The jolting came back for a second onslaught. Obliquely Shirley was aware of the upward cast of Mara's eyes as two blue stars in the gingham-stamped sunlight. 'Could you?' he said, voice dry.

'Mm,' said Mara. 'Had I wanted it.'

'And you didn't?'

Mara laughed, not ungently. She said, 'I was sixteen. I had no idea _what_ it was I wanted, save that it was more, somehow.'

'Of course it was.' He tried, for what seemed an endless moment, to fit her neatly into the lace-and-antimacassars existence that seemed to be Rilla's Toronto life, but couldn't do it. He kept coming stubbornly up against the everlasting scripts with her marginalia, and the stock of poetry folded into the corner of her mouth, whispered between kisses. To take it away – no, that was someone else entirely.

Mara's hands found the curve of his jaw and traced it lightly. She said, 'It's nothing you didn't know. I mean, you knew there had been other people.'

'Not like that,' said Shirley. 'I hadn't realised any of them counted.'

'Had they counted, _mo cridhe_ I'd not be here.' She spared a kiss for his mouth and said, 'Besides, you'll have had your share of sweethearts, surely.'

'No,' said Shirley. 'I meant that too, when I told you. There was only ever you.'

* * *

At the spindly-legged table, Jem looked up from a letter had been perusing, and said, 'They're never coming back,' in desultory fashion. He considered a piece of cooling toast, rejected it, and instead refolded the letter. 'I can't see what Shirley wants with bloated sheep and lamed cattle on holiday, but they're definitely never coming back.'

'Do you think so?' asked Faith, absorbed in a letter of her own.

'Don't you?'

Before Faith could answer, Kitty leaned across her elbow, retrieved the butter dish from its perilous position near Tuesday's eager jaws, and said, 'They're not _allowed_ to stay there forever.'

'Quite,' said Jem. Faith, handing over her own letter said 'Here's Mara's account. See if it reassures you at all.'

'I find it hard to believe they write markedly different letters' saidJem, swapping with her gladly.

'They probably don't. Though you might find Mara's light on the health of the MacDaird sheep.'

It was not a letter designed to be read by other people. Less the details, more the improbable way Mara tacked between topics confident in the assumption the reader would keep pace. Jem managed half a page before looking up and saying, 'You're going to have to parse this. Of all you girls who pin hopes, the only one to write a halfway intelligible letter is my sister.'

Faith laughed. She said, 'Nan _would_ ,' and went on placidly in her perusal of the letter from Shirley letter while Christopher vented his latest grievance; namely the insufficiency of the attention being paid him. Teddy leaned over, scooped him out of his basket and peace returned. Jem passed Mara's letter back across the table and said to Faith, 'How can you keep up with all that?'

More laughter as Faith took Christopher from Teddy. She settled him against her chest and said, 'We lived together for three years. Ariel's way of thinking isn't exactly alien to me.'

Tuesday scrabbled up into Teddy's now vacant lap. For good measure Kitty said again, 'They're not allowed to stay.'

'In that case,' said Faith, 'you had better find a good reason to persuade them otherwise.'

* * *

It was August, and summer only by a Scottish measure. The haar had burnt off the shore, but it had left behind that marked meteorological fickleness so peculiar to the Islands that brought weather that changed by the quarter hour. The last hour alone had witnessed a whirlwind parade of all four seasons. Not half an hour ago it had been deep November, as the chill of the wind across the water chased the haar away. April mizzle had followed on its heels, and summer had skimmed briefly across the sky, a puff of white cloud and sunburst that bespoke June. Now it was autumnal October, less only the vivid colours of a Canadian autumn – or it was but for the date on the letter that had arrived from Larkrise.

In the imperfect shelter of the gorse hedge and a stray rowan, Shirley read it aloud as Mara worked the garden, here eradicating brambles, uprooting spearheaded thistles and creeping nettles, there harvesting cress and mint, while wind blew the smell of the gorse, coconut-sweet and so incongruous in the clear, chill air, towards them. To date Christopher and Tuesday had allied out of a mutual need for attention and familial kisses, a circumstance which thoroughly nonplussed the Carlisle gremlins and Teddy scrabbling to make up the difference to them with ever more inventive games. Kitty had landed a front page story and was in raptures about it, 'And Jem writes that the Rydels are leaving Fox Corner,' said Shirley.

'Oh? Are they thinking of moving, then?'

Shirley laughed. He said, 'Jem will tear down and rebuild the Larkrise foundation, and never mind the deposit before he thinks of moving. No, I rather think he means it as a hint to us.'

'I see.' Mara sat back on her heels. Shirley couldn't decide if she'd written off the brambles were a wasted endeavour, acquired a sufficiency of mint and cress, or only temporarily given over her attention. The mint, deeply aromatic, and the richness of the gorse perfumed the air like incense, tempered by the coolness of the cress. 'Do you mean to take it, then?'

'We could do,' said Shirley. He snared her ankle in one hand and gently tugged her closer. 'It certainly has advantages. Not far from the others, _very_ near the Carlisles, as I recall, near enough the coach house I wouldn't worry over you walking home after an evening spent touring with work.'

'There's a _but_ in there somewhere,' said Mara, relaxing against his side. Somehow, in spite of the perpetual breeze that seemed to play across the water she was sun-warm with work, and of course the mint, the cress and the soil had got into her skin, the smell and the taste of it as Shirley pressed a kiss to her fingers.

'More an _or,_ ' he said.

'And that would be?'

With effort he refocused his attention on the conversation at hand. The freshness of the mint and the gorse-sweetness of her notwithstanding. 'We could stay,' said Shirley, not elaborating. There was no need to.

'We could that,' Mara said. The air was crisp and cool, summery only by an island standard. She folded her hands into the shelter of his collar and acquiesced to the impulse to take refuge in him. 'It would be easy to stay – very easy.'

'Do you think so?'

Mara hummed ascension, and Shirley, in the seclusion of the garden, brushed aside the interference of skirt-hem and stocking, mapping the fine bones of her ankle and shin with his fingers. A flurry of midges rose up through the grass, disturbed by the gesture, and Mara swatted them away. A lark launched itself out of the rowan and launched itself heavenward, its body a lone brown arrow in the crisp cool air. Mara was right; it would indeed be easy to stay here, among the sweetness of the gorse, the bluster of the wind, the pummelling of the sea against the vastness of the shore. There was indeed, nothing like the tangle of the isles. At some point, contrapuntally to the lark, Mara had begun to hum, _Ho ro Mairi Dhu_ , Shirley thought, as she had sometimes during the war. He registered this only when the buzzing of the notes against his chest subsided and Mara turned to look at him, eyes like clear blue stars.

'Let me think on it?' said Mara, her voice muffled and lilting against the hollow of his chest.

'By all means.'


	22. Curtain

_I thought about delaying this chapter further too. But apparently I was making the lot of you twitch rather, and it was catching. So with love and affection to all of you, here is the conclusion. Many thanks to anyone who has read and/or reviewed, followed and favourited this story. It's not the last we'll see of this universe, so keep your eyes peeled, but for this story, we are at the end._

* * *

Ingleside was under snow, the thick, downy kind that must surely hinder travelling. And it hadn't stopped! The air was hushed and heavy with the noiseless tumble of it in glad, silent flurries. At the window of the Ingleside Parlour, Anne Blythe folded her knees under her chin and wished on the snowflakes as they fell. She could all but smell them in their crispness, just discernible through the blue-green aroma of the becandled spruce, and the bitter holly stalks on the mantle. Would they _never_ come?

Susan bustled into the room, arms laden with silverware, and Anne left the window to join her in last-minute polishing, waving away that woman's protestations and the metallic smell of the polish with a smile.

The clattering brought Gilbert to them; he poked his head into the parlour and inquired, needlessly, Anne felt, if anyone had arrived yet. He was trying and failing not to sound over-eager.

'Only us, dearest,' said Anne, and smiled at him. Gilbert shook his head, _I should have known better_ writ large on his face. Then, brightening, he said, 'A dollar says they have to come in on the milk-train, what do you say, Anne-girl?'

Susan muttered something darkly about Popery being catching, because good Presbyterians didn't lay bets, and gave old Mrs Blythe's silver teapot an especially vicious swipe with her cloth; Romishness had become a sore point. No one noticed.

Anne betook her silver to the window seat, the better to work and observe the comings and goings of her garden. The smell of the polish was less there, overpowered by the bitterness of the holly wreathing Gog and Magog and the resin of the spruce. They would already be a diminished party; Una and Carl had sent apologies to say there was no way of leaving Yarmouth, home of what Anne had begun to consider Una's Mission School as much as Jo's, the way Phil's letters raved of her work.

'Cost of travel as much as the weather, I shouldn't wonder,' Gilbert had murmured on the Merediths going, and had laughed heartily along with the others when a parcel arrived in their stead, heavy with Una's famous Christmas Cake, a tin of shortbread and a collection of entombed grasshoppers whose inclusion in the bounty Rosemary Meredith felt _sure_ had not been intentional. 'Not by Una, anyway,' John had said with a smile that proved infectious.

'Any sign of them?' asked Gilbert, coming and joining Anne at the window. He let fall a cotton-wrap quilt around her, thereby preserving the impression that he had not wandered into the parlour purely to wait the coming of his children. Anne shook her head.

'None. Dearest, remind me why we aren't going to meet them?'

'Because, Anne-girl,' said Gilbert reasonably, 'we'd end by running a ferry service between Ingleside and the station. It would take ages and we'd almost certainly be out when some of them arrived. Besides, at this stage the Kingsport Contingent would never all fit in the automobile. This is _much_ better.'

'I'll take your word for it,' said Anne, but she continued doubtful sounding.

Presently the white expanse of virgin landscape was broken by the trundling of a cart up the road and the sound of harness bells on the lane.

'They're _here_!' cried a jubilant Anne, and rushed out of the parlour and through the front door, four o'clock teaspoon still in hand, Gilbert's ' _Who's_ here?' quite lost to her.

* * *

It was no matter. He followed her out in time to assist Nan down off the carriage stoop, chiefly by lifting Mandy out of her arms. Her little gingery eyebrows were flecked with snow. He kissed it away, and looked up in time to see his daughter followed by a small dark person with owlish grey eyes and little Miri in her arms.

'Mouse,' he said, and grinned as he pulled her and her burden briskly into a one-armed hug. 'It's taken entirely too long to get you here.'

'That's just what I said,' said Nan as she moved to reclaim Mandy. Dutifully Gilbert capitulated in favour of assisting Jerry and Peter with the luggage.

'Was it a very long journey, darling?' came Anne's voice back to him over the wind. Nan made her some answer, but by then they had turned inward, a little threefold knot and were heading towards Ingleside and the Applewood fire, no doubt to the relief of Susan, standing staunchly in the doorway, the better to whisk the little girls out of the cold and into the warm.

Inside, cheeks were pressed, hands assessed for cold, and the rosebud china, vintage Marilla Cuthbert, was carried out in state to the parlour while everyone talked over each other. No sooner had they sat down when a horn blared under the window, setting off a gush of tears and tremulous weeping from the twins and sending Anne out the door like a whirlwind again, armed this time with a teacup. Poppy's eyes, Gilbert saw, had widened owlishly.

'Fords,' said Gilbert to her. 'Ten to one they've done that purely to terrify Susan.' For indeed, Susan now stood clutching little Mandy to her chest like a talisman, looking for all the world as if she had seen a ghost. The first part of this supposition was subsequently borne out by the silvery laughter of one Leslie Ford in the hall, and the appearance of little Rilla in the parlour, green cloche in hand. Said she when Gilbert's eyebrows sailed upwards at the sight of it, 'It wasn't _nearly_ so extravagant as the last one. And there isn't a war on now – and anyway, it was an early Christmas gift, wasn't it?' This last in the direction of Ken, who only grinned his answer.

'I've always liked that shade of green,' he said, stretching out leisurely in Gilbert's usual armchair, 'Especially on you, Rilla-my-Rilla. And I never got to see you wear it when the war was on. The indulgence,' with a nod Gilbert-ward, 'is all mine, I assure you.'

Gilbert shook his head. Nan, who had been pacing the floor with Miri, now sat down Turk-fashion next to the Moses baskets and, assisted by Susan, reinstalled her children thence.

In the ensuing interval, Leslie had taken the teapot hostage and was now to be seen pouring out to her family while Susan wailed horrors at the thought of guests serving themselves. That Gilbert did not laugh owed chiefly to an inrush of cold air and a war-whoop announcing the incoming party as Jem's. Confirmation followed in the shape of an almighty wail from little Christopher, exhausted from a day spent in travelling and declining to sleep.

'He doesn't like trains _at all_ ,' said Faith, flinging herself, coat, hat, child and all, onto the sofa at Gilbert's elbow. She looked at once exhausted and golden as ever. ' _Much_ too noisy apparently. And Mama had the nerve to do _absolutely nothing_ about it.'

'He was fine,' said Kitty, settling at her feet, 'until the train started. I reckon he likes them all right, just stationary.'

'Give him here,' said Gilbert, reaching for the warm, writhing bundle of limbs that was his grandson. 'I'll see if I can't explain about how he has to take that one up with his Uncle Bruce over an appointment with girning water.'

'You are a saint,' said Faith, which proclamation elicited a sniff from Susan.

'I should have said those were my province, not yours,' came Mara's voice from the parlour door and thereafter chaos descended as several things happened at once. Chief of these was the temporary halting of the excursion of grandfather and grandson to the study for girning water. Instead Gilbert abruptly turned back to the latest arrivals, arms still full of recalcitrant Christopher and attempted to sweep the both newcomers into a hug at once. He was hindered in the first instance by a bustling Susan, who flew at the pair of them and all but lifted hats and coats from their person, so that Gilbert succeeded only in squeezing assorted shoulders and that imperfectly. Anne had done better, somehow getting Shirley into her arms and was in the process, so Gilbert surmised, of crushing him from the ribs upwards.

'You came _back_!' she said with satisfaction, even as the exclamation rippled round the room in chorus.

'Of course we came back,' said Shirley, managing to sound indignant and breathless at once. Gilbert opened his mouth to say he knew not what; that this was far from obvious; that they hadn't expected it; to ask _why_ , for the sake of familial nerves, hand no one written a letter. Perhaps even to risk asking how long they had them for. He said none of these things, instead closing his mouth again, dumbstruck. Words were insufficient to the occasion, see further Susan, bobbing and clucking with approval, her eyes suspiciously moist.

Di then appeared in the parlour doorway and Gilbert pulled her tight into a hug.

'We've missed you,' he said, meaning it for all of them. He stood for a moment with Di in his arms and Christopher pressed between them, taking stock of his family. 'Where,' he said, as Di tucked her head under his chin, 'is Teddy?'

'Gone to family for Christmas,' said Kitty, from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, fondling an elderly Dog Monday's ears. 'He sends apologies and Christmas greetings.'

Thereafter, Di rang for the Merediths to come up, and Gilbert went finally for the girning water. Jem settled the question of the milk train such that Anne parted gladly with a dollar, all while Faith soothed her son. Jerry stoked the fire and Susan, with mixed results, attempted to serve a civilised tea, while Shirley – results equally mixed – strove to reassure her that at no point had anyone resolved to leave the country everlastingly, and what had given her that idea in the first place?

'Is that true?' asked Gilbert of Mara, and she laughed.

'After a fashion. We did think on it – and came back. I promised Mouse once, you know, that I wouldn't ever go away.'

'I'd never have held you to it,' said Poppy, even as she laid a glossy dark head on Mara's shoulder. 'Not over this.'

Gilbert only shook his head. 'Thank God for Mouse and her promises,' all he said.

Assam spice mingled with Christmas greenery as Gilbert sat down opposite Kitty to a round of chess. Nearby, Di and Mara eked out the much-neglected Othello board from under the coffee-table, and Jims and Bruce, assisted by Peter, set to work on the building of an elaborate train set around the feet of unsuspecting adults, even as cups of tea grew cold around them. Una's Christmas Cake with its cinnamon and cloves savour and shortbread, buttery and rich as ever, was duly brought out – notably minus the wizened grasshopper collection – and passed 'round by Rosemary. Nan and her mother fell to talking what could have been children but Gilbert suspected was writing. Poppy and Leslie Ford worshipped dutifully at the altar of the Meredith twins, while Owen sat down at Anne's feet, confirming writing as the subject of the hour with her. When Gilbert next looked across the table, Kitty had landed him in an improbable check, and Mara had lured the teapot away from Susan the better to minister to neglected teacups. Di emerged from the kitchen armed with a fresh pot of hot water. Jerry took Kitty's side in the chess game and John Gilbert's. It was, in short, as jostling, merry and bright a Christmas holiday as anyone could wish.

This impression was corrected late Christmas afternoon. Santa had duly been and gone, with a kiss for Mrs Blythe and a burden of Christmas offerings that stacked higher than the children receiving them were tall. Jims worried _a little_ that Dr Blythe had missed meeting Father Christmas when everyone else had, but was suitably assuaged by the combination of maple candy, a clementine and what was pronounced a 'famous' chemistry set.

They were at dinner, awash in competing smells of roast goose, creamy potatoes, tomato and gravy sauces, and the golden crispness of Yorkshire pudding, when the door rattled on the latch, proclaiming still more company. 'I'll get it,' said Kitty, who at the far end of the table had easiest access to the door. Susan began to protest, but Kitty, slightly built and quick-moving, eeled out of the room ahead of her.

Squeals shortly emanated from the hall, and then the abominable snowman stepped into the dining room.

'You said,' said Kitty excitably, 'that you couldn't get away!' She was all but bouncing on the balls of her feet in credible imitation of Dachshund Tuesday.

'I guess I stuck the holiday out as long as I reasonably could, Kitten,' said Teddy, cuffing the back of her dark head as Faith pulled him fiercely into a hug. That this covered her good dress in snow she did not appear to register. 'I thought,' this to the crown of Faith's head, 'it was probably better the little boys remember me being there without bloodshed, you know?'

'Well,' said Faith, deigning to let him go, 'We're glad to have you.'

Jem snared a hug of his own while Anne went for a chair, Susan for another place setting, and space was made between Jerry and Poppy for one more person. The table resettled into something approximating order, the air full of the chatter of dishware, the burbling of the children, the mingled scents of greens, meats and pastry, and the clamour of myriad cross-currents of conversation.

Gilbert leaned back in his chair and catching Anne's eyes, green in the winter sunlight, spared a Blythe smile for her, equal parts mischief and humour. _This_ was something like. Impossible not to look around the table and see in it the thing Walter had so long ago prophesied, the world they would build, sure in foundation and waxing stronger by the day. More than that, it was the realisation of an old dream he and Anne had been used to conjure for the children ever since House of Dreams days; one spackled with laughter and founded on friendships, thick in well-wishes and happiness. Quite how they had got there seemed unsayable; it seemed as yesterday Gilbert had held a gurgling Jem in his arms and promised him the world. But here they were; elbows knocking, eyes sparkling, Susan's plum pudding suffering woeful neglect in the name of fellowship and family. It made for a grand scene, table leaves stretched to groaning point, the laughter of old friends, his children with their arms around sweethearts and _their_ children in their arms.

Whatever had happened along the way, the war, the crosses and losses, it was enough that Gilbert could look at them now– Anne too – and say with conviction as they had so often said in yesteryear, _God's_ _in his heaven, and all's right with the world._


End file.
